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Sensory ecology of ostariophysan alarm substances
Caio Maximino1, Rhayra X do Carmo Silva1,2, Kimberly Dos Santos Campos3
1Laboratório de Neurociências e Comportamento "Frederico Guilherme Graeff", Instituto de Estudos em Saúde e Biológicas, Universidade Federal do Sul e Sudeste do Pará, Nova Marabá, Brazil.
Abstract:
Chemical communication of predation risk has evolved multiple times in fish species, with conspecific alarm substance (CAS) being the most well understood mechanism. CAS is released after epithelial damage, usually when prey fish are captured by a predator and elicits neurobehavioural adjustments in conspecifics which increase the probability of avoiding predation. As such, CAS is a partial predator stimulus, eliciting risk assessment-like and avoidance behaviours and disrupting the predation sequence. The present paper reviews the distribution and putative composition of CAS in fish and presents a model for the neural processing of these structures by the olfactory and the brain aversive systems. Applications of CAS in the behavioural neurosciences and neuropharmacology are also presented, exploiting the potential of model fish [e.g., zebrafish Danio rerio, guppies Poecilia reticulata, minnows Phoxinus phoxinus) in neurobehavioural research.
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