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In nature, animals must navigate to forage according to their sensory inputs. Different species use different sensory modalities to locate food efficiently. For teleosts, food emits visual, mechanical, chemical, and/or possibly weak-electrical signals, which can be detected by optic, auditory/lateral line, and olfactory/taste buds sensory systems. However, how fish respond to and use different sensory inputs when locating food, as well as the evolution of these sensory modalities, remain unclear. We examined the Mexican tetra, Astyanax mexicanus, which is composed of two different morphs: a sighted riverine (surface fish) and a blind cave morph (cavefish). Compared with surface fish, cavefish have enhanced non-visual sensory systems, including the mechanosensory lateral line system, chemical sensors comprising the olfactory system and taste buds, and the auditory system to help navigate toward food sources. We tested how visual, chemical, and mechanical stimuli evoke food-seeking behavior. In contrast to our expectations, both surface fish and cavefish did not follow a gradient of chemical stimulus (food extract) but used it as a cue for the ambient existence of food. Surface fish followed visual cues (red plastic beads and food pellets), but, in the dark, were likely to rely on mechanosensors—the lateral line and/or tactile sensor—as cavefish did. Our results indicate cavefish used a similar sensory modality to surface fish in the dark, while affinity levels to stimuli were higher in cavefish. In addition, cavefish evolved an extended circling strategy to forage, which may yield a higher chance to capture food by swimming-by the food multiple times instead of once through zigzag motion. In summary, we propose that ancestors of cavefish, similar to the modern surface fish, evolved extended food-seeking behaviors, including circling motion, to adapt to the dark. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Complex patterns of acoustic communication exist throughout the animal kingdom, including underwater. The river-dwelling and the Pachón cave-adapted morphotypes of the fish Astyanax mexicanus are soniferous and share a repertoire of sounds. Their function and significance is mostly unknown. Here, we explored whether and how sounds produced by blind cavefishes inhabiting different Mexican caves may vary. We compared "Clicks" and "Serial Clicks" produced by cavefish in six different caves distributed in three mountain ranges in Mexico. We also sampled laboratory-bred cavefish lines originating from four of these caves. Sounds were extracted and analyzed using both a manual method and a machine learning-based automation tool developed in-house. Multi-parametric analyses suggest wild cave-specific acoustic signatures, or "accents". An acoustic code also existed in laboratory cavefish lines, suggesting a genetic basis for the evolution of this trait. The variations in acoustic parameters between caves of origin did not seem related to fish phenotypes, phylogeography or ecological conditions. We propose that the evolution of such acoustic signatures would progressively lead to the differentiation of local accents that may prevent interbreeding and thus contribute to speciation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fish display a remarkable diversity of social behaviors, both within and between species. While social behaviors are likely critical for survival, surprisingly little is known about how they evolve in response to changing environmental pressures. With its highly social surface form and multiple populations of a largely asocial, blind, cave-dwelling form, the Mexican tetra, Astyanax mexicanus, provides a powerful model to study the evolution of social behavior. Here we use motion tracking and analysis of swimming kinematics to quantify social swimming in four Astyanax mexicanus populations. In the light, surface fish school, maintaining both close proximity and alignment with each other. In the dark, surface fish no longer form coherent schools, however, they still show evidence of an attempt to align and maintain proximity when they find themselves near another fish. In contrast, cavefish from three independently-evolved populations (Pachón, Molino, Tinaja) show little preference for proximity or alignment, instead exhibiting behaviors that suggest active avoidance of each other. Two of the three cave populations we studied also slow down when more fish are present in the tank, a behavior which is not observed in surface fish in light or the dark, suggesting divergent responses to conspecifics. Using data-driven computer simulations, we show that the observed reduction in swimming speed is sufficient to alter the way fish explore their environment: it can increase time spent exploring away from the walls. Thus, the absence of schooling in cavefish is not merely a consequence of their inability to see, but may rather be a genuine behavioral adaptation that impacts the way they explore their environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The diploid genotypes of males are widely thought to determine sperm phenotypes, yet recent work shows that the haploid genetics of the individual sperm cell also contributes significantly. We tested seven sperm phenotypes, flagellar length and six behaviors, looking for correlations between genetic and phenotypic variability. While flagellar length appears to be controlled by the diploid genotype of the source, variation in three of the behavioral phenotypes, linearity, wobble, and progression are significantly correlated with the heterozygosity of the male producer. Because males that are more genetically variable produce a sperm set that is more diverse in its haploid genotypes, we suggest that the correlations may reflect significant haploid genetic control of sperm swimming behaviors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blindness is a convergent trait in many cave animals of various phyla. Astyanax mexicanus cavefish is one of the best studied cave animals; however the mechanisms underlying eye degeneration in this species are not yet completely understood. The lens seems to play a central role, but only relatively late differentiation defects have been implicated in the cavefish lens apoptosis phenotype so far. Here, we used genetic crosses between Astyanax cavefish and surface fish to confirm that during development, lens size is independent of retina size. We then investigated whether the small size of the cavefish lens could directly cause cell death. Laser ablation experiments of lens placode cells in surface fish embryos showed that a small lens size is not sufficient to trigger lens apoptosis. We further examined potential lens morphogenesis defects through classical histology and live-imaging microscopy. From lens placode to lens ball, we found that lens invagination and formation of the lens epithelium and fiber cells occur normally in cavefish. We conclude that the main and deleterious defect in the Astyanax cavefish lens must concern the molecular control of lens cell function. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

DNA barcoding has been used extensively to solve taxonomic questions and identify new species. Neotropical fishes are found in a wide variety of shapes and sizes, with a large number of species yet to be described, many of which are very difficult to identify. Characidae is the most species-rich family of the Characiformes, and many of its genera are affected by taxonomic uncertainties, including the widely-distributed, species-rich genus Astyanax. In this study, we present an extensive analysis of Astyanax covering almost its entire area of occurrence, based on DNA barcoding. The use of different approaches (ABGD, GMYC and BIN) to the clustering of the sequences revealed ample consistency in the results obtained by the initial cutoff value of 2% divergence for putative species in the Neighbor-Joining analysis using the Kimura-2-parameter model. The results indicate the existence of five Astyanax lineages. Some groups, such as that composed by the trans-Andean forms, are mostly composed of well-defined species, and in others a number of nominal species are clustered together, hampering the delimitation of species, which in many cases proved impossible. The results confirm the extreme complexity of the systematics of the genus Astyanax and show that DNA barcoding can be an useful tool to address these complexes questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Albinism, the loss of melanin pigmentation, has evolved in a diverse variety of cave animals but the responsible evolutionary mechanisms are unknown. In Astyanax mexicanus, which has a pigmented surface dwelling form (surface fish) and several albino cave-dwelling forms (cavefish), albinism is caused by loss of function mutations in the oca2 gene, which operates during the first step of the melanin synthesis pathway. In addition to albinism, cavefish have evolved differences in behavior, including feeding and sleep, which are under the control of the catecholamine system. The catecholamine and melanin synthesis pathways diverge after beginning with the same substrate, L-tyrosine. Here we describe a novel relationship between the catecholamine and melanin synthesis pathways in Astyanax. Our results show significant increases in L-tyrosine, dopamine, and norepinephrine in pre-feeding larvae and adult brains of Pachón cavefish relative to surface fish. In addition, norepinephrine is elevated in cavefish adult kidneys, which contain the teleost homologs of catecholamine synthesizing adrenal cells. We further show that the oca2 gene is expressed during surface fish development but is downregulated in cavefish embryos. A key finding is that knockdown of oca2 expression in surface fish embryos delays the development of pigmented melanophores and simultaneously increases L-tyrosine and dopamine. We conclude that a potential evolutionary benefit of albinism in Astyanax cavefish may be to provide surplus L-tyrosine as a precursor for the elevated catecholamine synthesis pathway, which could be important for adaptation to the challenging cave environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]