JN AJP citation statistics
HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH
 QUICK SEARCH:   [advanced]


     


J Neurophysiol (June 24, 2009). doi:10.1152/jn.00236.2009
This Article
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Supplemental Figures
Right arrow All Versions of this Article:
102/2/1121    most recent
00236.2009v1
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in Web of Science
Right arrow Similar articles in PubMed
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Sisneros, J. A.
PubMed
Right arrow PubMed Citation
Right arrow Articles by Sisneros, J. A.
Submitted on March 16, 2009
Revised on June 15, 2009
Accepted on June 15, 2009

Seasonal plasticity of auditory saccular sensitivity in the vocal plainfin midshipman fish, Porichthys notatus

Joseph A. Sisneros1*

1 University of Washington

The plainfin midshipman fish, Porichthys notatus, is a seasonally breeding species of marine teleost fish that generates acoustic signals for intraspecific social and reproductive-related communication. Female midshipman use the inner ear saccule as the main acoustic endorgan for hearing to detect and locate vocalizing males that produce multiharmonic advertisement calls during the breeding season. Previous work showed that the frequency sensitivity of midshipman auditory saccular afferents changed seasonally with female reproductive state such that summer reproductive females became better suited than winter non-reproductive females to encode the dominant higher harmonics of the male advertisement calls. The focus of this study was to test the hypothesis that seasonal reproductive-dependent changes in saccular afferent tuning is paralleled by similar changes in saccular sensitivity at the level of the hair cell receptor. Here, I examined the evoked response properties of midshipman saccular hair cells from winter non-reproductive and summer reproductive females to determine if reproductive state affects the frequency response and threshold of the saccule to behaviorally-relevant single tone stimuli. Saccular potentials were recorded from populations of hair cells in vivo while sound was presented by an underwater speaker. Results indicate that saccular hair cells from reproductive females had thresholds that were approximately 8 to 13 dB lower than non-reproductive females across a broad range of frequencies that included the dominant higher harmonic components and the fundamental frequency of the male's advertisement call. These seasonal reproductive-dependents changes in thresholds varied differentially across the three (rostral, middle, and caudal) regions of the saccule. Such reproductive-dependent changes in saccule sensitivity may represent an adaptive plasticity of the midshipman auditory sense to enhance mate detection, recognition and localization during the breeding season.







HOME HELP FEEDBACK SUBSCRIPTIONS ARCHIVE SEARCH
Visit Other APS Journals Online
Copyright © 2009 by the The American Physiological Society.