A question often asked of those of us who work in the seemingly esoteric field of fish vision is, why? To some of us the answer seems obvious - how many other visual scientists get to dive in a tropical lagoon in the name of science and then are able to eat their subjects for dinner? However, there are better, or at least scientifically more acceptable, reasons for working on the visual system of fish. First, in terms of numbers, fish are by far the most important of all vertebrate classes, probably accounting for over half (c. 22 000 species) of all recognized vertebrate species (Nelson, 1984). Furthermore, many of these are of commercial importance. Secondly, if one of the research aims is to understand the human visual system, animals such as fish can tell us a great deal, since in many ways their visual systems, and specifically their eyes, are similar to our own. This is fortunate, since there are several techniques, such as intracellular retinal recording, which are vital to our understanding of the visual process, that cannot be performed routinely on primates. The cold blooded fish, on the other hand, is an ideal subject for such studies and much of what we know about, for example, the fundamentals of information processing in the retina is based on work carried out on fish (e. g. Svaetichin, 1953).

This book is about the behaviour of teleosts, a well-defined, highly successful, taxonomic group of vertebrate animals sharing a common body plan and forming the vast majority of living bony fishes. There are weH over 22000 living species of teleosts, including nearly all those of importance in com mercial fisheries and aquaculture. Teleosts are represented injust about every conceivable aquatic environment from temporary desert pools to the deep ocean, from soda lakes to sub-zero Antarctic waters. Behaviour is the primary interface between these effective survival machines and their environment: behavioural plasticity is one of the keys to their success. The study of animal behaviour has undergone revolutionary changes in the past decade under the dual impact of behavioural ecology and sociobiology. The modern body of theory provides quantitatively testable and experi mentaHy accessible hypotheses. Much current work in animal behaviour has concentrated on birds and mammals, animals with ostensibly more complex structure, physiology and behavioural capacity, but there is a growing body of information about the behaviour of fishes. There is now increasing awareness that the same ecological and evolutionary rules govern teleost fish, and that their behaviour is not just a simplified version of that seen in birds and mammals. The details of fish behaviour intimately reflect unique and efficient adaptations to their three-dimensional aquatic environment.

Fish comprise more than 50% of all living vertebrates and are found in a wide range of highly diverse habitats like the deep sea, the shoreline, tide pools, tropical streams and sweetwater ponds. During evolution, the senses of fish have adapted to the physical conditions of the environment in which different species live. As a result, the senses of fish exhibit a remarkable diversity that allows different species to deal with the physical constraints imposed by their habitat. In addition, fish have evolved several `new' sensory systems that are unique to the aquatic environment. In this book, examples of adaptation and refinement are given for six sensory systems: The visual system, The auditory system, The olfactory system, The mechanosensory lateral line system, The taste system, The electrosensory system. In each case, the environmental conditions under which a particular group of fish lives are analyzed. This is followed by a description of morphology and physiology of the sensory system and by an evaluation of its perceptional capabilities. Finally, the sensory adaptations to the particular conditions that prevail in the habitat of a species are highlighted. The various examples from different groups of fish presented in this book demonstrate the impressive capability of fish sensory systems to effectively overcome physical problems imposed by the environment.

The visual world of animals is highly diverse and often very different from that of humans. This book provides an extensive review of the latest behavioral and neurobiological research on animal vision, detailing fascinating species similarities and differences in visual processing.

A counting book depicting the colorful fish a child might see if he turned into a fish himself.

The Lateral Line System provides an overview of the key concepts and issues surrounding the development, evolution, neurobiology, and function of the lateral line, a fascinating yet somewhat enigmatic flow-sensing system. The book examines the historical precedence for linking the auditory and lateral line systems, its structure and development, use of the lateral line system of zebrafish as a model system, physical principles governing the response properties of the lateral line, the behavioral relevance of this sensory system to the lives of fish, and an examination of how this information is shaped and encoded by the peripheral and central nervous systems. Contents The Gems of the Past: A Brief History of Lateral Line Research in the Context of the Hearing Sciences - Sheryl Coombs and Horst Bleckmann Morphological Diversity, Development, and Evolution of the Mechanosensory Lateral Line System - Jacqueline F. Webb The Hydrodynamic of Flow Stimuli - Matthew J. McHenry and James C. Liao The Biophysics of the Fish Lateral Line - Sietse M. van Netten and Matthew J. McHenry Sensory Ecology and Neuroethology of the Lateral Line - John Montgomery, Horst Bleckmann, and Sheryl Coombs Information Encoding and Processing by the Peripheral Lateral Line System - Boris Philippe Chagnaud and Sheryl Coombs The Central Nervous Organization of the Lateral Line System - Mario F. Wullimann and Benedikt Grothe Central Processing of Lateral Line Information - Horst Bleckmann and Joachim Mogdans Functional Overlap and Nonoverlap Between Lateral Line and Auditory Systems - Christopher B. Braun and Olav Sand The Hearing Loss, Protection, and Regeneration in the Larval Zebrafish Lateral Line - Allison B. Coffin, Heather Brignull, David W. Raible, and Edwin W Rubel

This volume constitutes a series of invited chapters based on presentations given at an International Conference on the Sensory Biology of Aquatic Animals held June 24-28, 1985 at the Mote Marine Laboratory in Sarasota, Florida. The immediate purpose of the conference was to spark an exchange of ideas, concepts, and techniques among investigators concerned with the different sensory modalities employed by a wide variety of animal species in extracting information from the aquatic environment. By necessity, most investigators of sensory biology are specialists in one sensory system: different stimulus modalities require different methods of stimulus control and, generally, different animal models. Yet, it is clear that all sensory systems have principles in common, such as stimulus filtering by peripheral structures, tuning of receptor cells, signal-to-noise ratios, adaption and disadaptation, and effective dynamic range. Other features, such as hormonal and efferent neural control, circadian reorganization, and receptor recycling are known in some and not in other senses. The conference afforded an increased awareness of new discoveries in other sensory systems that has effectively inspired a fresh look by the various participants at their own area of specialization to see whether or not similar principles apply. This inspiration was found not only in theoretical issues, but equally in techniques and methods of approach. The myopy of sensory specialization was broken in one unexpected way by showing limitations of individual sense organs and their integration within each organism. For instance, studying vision, one generally chooses a visual animal as a model.

The vertebrate eye has been, and continues to be, an object of interest and of inquiry for biologists, physicists, chemists, psychologists, and others. Quite apart from its important role in the development of ophthalmology and related medical disciplines, the vertebrate eye is an exemplar of the ingenuity of living systems in adapting to the diverse and changing environments in which vertebrates have evolved. The wonder is not so much that the visual system, like other body systems, has been able to adapt in this way, but rather that these adaptations have taken such a variety of forms. In a previous volume in this series (VII/I) Eakin expressed admiration for the diversity of invertebrate photoreceptors. A comparable situation exists for the vertebrate eye as a whole and one object of this volume is to present to the reader the nature of this diversity. One result of this diversification of ocular structures and properties is that the experimental biologist has available a number of systems for study that are unique or especially favorable for the investigation of particular questions in visual science or neurobiology. This volume includes some examples of progress made by the use of such specially selected vertebrate systems. It is our hope that this comparative approach will continue to reveal new and useful preparations for the examination of important questions.