Synonyms
Electrogenic fish
Definition
Some fishes possess electric organs who's only known function is the generation of electricity outside their bodies. Strong organs are for defense and stunning prey, weak organs for active electrolocation and electrocommunication in nocturnal species.
Characteristics
For more detailed reviews, see [1–3]. Any living tissue generates an electric field in its environment. The field is associated with the regulation of the tissue's ionic balance. These fields are D.C. or of low frequency, and, in animals, usually modulated by superimposed field potentials arising from normal nerve and muscle cell activity. Relative to a distant electrode, potentials measured are up to 0.5 mV in marine species, and a few Millivolt in freshwater teleosts (see entry “electric communication and electrolocation”).
In electric fishes, however, the generation of electricity is of another dimension, both in amplitude and regularity. These fishes’ electric organs are...
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References
Moller P (1995) Electric fishes: history and behavior. Chapman & Hall, London
Kramer B (1996) Electroreception and communication in fishes. Gustav Fischer Verlag, Stuttgart
Kramer B (1990) Electrocommunication in teleost fishes: behavior and experiments. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York
Bennett MVL (1971) Electric organs. In: Hoar WS, Randall DJ (eds) Fish physiology. Academic Press, London New York, pp 347–491
Zakon HH (1988) The electroreceptors: diversity in structure and function. In: Atema J, Fay RR, Popper AN, Tavolga WN (eds) Sensory biology of aquatic animals. Springer, Berlin Heidelberg New York Tokyo, pp 813–850
Gosse JP (1984) Mormyriformes. In: Daget J, Gosse JP, Thys van den Audenaerde DFE (eds) Check-list of the freshwater fishes of Africa (CLOFFA). Office Rech Sci Tech Outre-Mer (ORSTOM), Bondy (France)/Mus R Afr Cent (MRAC), Tervuren (Belgium), pp 63–124
Albert JS, Campos-da-Paz R (1998) Phylogenetic systematics of Gymnotiformes with diagnoses of 58 clades: a review of available data. In: Malabarba LR, Reis RE, Vari RP, Lucena ZM, Lucena CAS (eds) Phylogeny and classification of neotropical fishes. Edipucrs, Porto Alegre, pp 419–446
Kramer B, van der Bank FH, Wink M (2004) The Hippopotamyrus ansorgii species complex in the Upper Zambezi River System with a description of a new species, H. szaboi (Mormyridae). Zoologica Scripta 33:1–18
Zakon HH, Unguez GA (1999) Development and regeneration of the electric organ. J exp Biol 202:1427–1434
Westby GWM, Kirschbaum F (1978) Emergence and development of the electric organ discharge in the mormyrid fish, Pollimyrus isidori. II. Replacement of the larval by the adult discharge. J Comp Physiol A 127:45–59
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Kramer, B. (2009). Electric Fish. In: Binder, M.D., Hirokawa, N., Windhorst, U. (eds) Encyclopedia of Neuroscience. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-29678-2_2915
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-540-29678-2_2915
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