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The electroreceptors can detect weak electrical fields which not only signal the presence of prey items in the water column, such as zooplankton which is the primary diet of the American paddlefish, but they can also detect the individual feeding and swimming movements of zooplankton's appendages.
Several basal bony fishes, including the paddlefish (Polyodon spathula), possess electroreceptors. The paddlefish hunts plankton using thousands of tiny passive electroreceptors located on its extended snout, or rostrum. The paddlefish is able to detect electric fields that oscillate at 0.5–20 Hz, and large groups of plankton generate this ...
The American paddlefish is native to the Mississippi River basin and once moved freely under the relatively unaltered conditions that existed prior to the early 1900s. It commonly inhabited large, free-flowing rivers, braided channels, backwaters, and oxbow lakes throughout the Mississippi River drainage basin, and adjacent Gulf Coast drainages.
Ampullae of Lorenzini are physically associated with and evolved from the mechanosensory lateral line organs of early vertebrates.Passive electroreception using ampullae is an ancestral trait in the vertebrates, meaning that it was present in their last common ancestor. [7]
The electroreceptors of monotremes consist of free nerve endings located in the mucous glands of the snout. Among the monotremes, the platypus (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) has the most acute electric sense. [37] [38] The platypus localises its prey using almost 40,000 electroreceptors arranged in front-to-back stripes along the bill. [34]
Paddlefish, goblin sharks and hammerhead sharks have rostrums packed with electroreceptors which signal the presence of prey by detecting weak electrical fields. Sawsharks and the critically endangered sawfish have rostrums (saws) which are both electro-sensitive and used for slashing. [9] The rostrums extend ventrally in front of the fish.
The elephantnose fish is a weakly electric fish which generates an electric field with its electric organ, detects small variations in the field with its electroreceptors, and processes the detected signals in the brain to locate nearby objects. [12] Weakly electric fish generate a discharge that is typically less than one volt.
The estimated time of the divergence between sturgeons and paddlefish varies. An estimate based on 30 protein-encoding nuclear markers suggest 204.1 million years ago, research on mitochondrial genomes suggest 155.2 million years ago, and Bayesian dating based on the combined matrix of molecular (mitogenomes) and morphological characters set ...