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Animals
Special Issues
Functional Morphology and Adaptations of Aquatic Life
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Functional Morphology and Adaptations of Aquatic Life

A special issue of Animals (ISSN 2076-2615). This special issue belongs to the section "Aquatic Animals".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (29 February 2024) | Viewed by 4100

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Peter S. Johnston

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Anatomy and Medical Imaging, University of Auckland, P.O. Box 92019, Auckland 1142, New Zealand
Interests: vertebrate morphology; comparative anatomy; birds; fish; crocodylians; bats; myology
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Aquatic vertebrates can be divided into two categories: “primarily aquatic”—extant fish of all taxa, including lungfish and coelacanth, and their aquatic ancestors—and “secondarily aquatic ”—tetrapod linages that have derived an aquatic life from their terrestrial ancestors, which include non-avian reptiles, birds and mammals that have all returned to the water in some branches of their evolutionary trees. Adaptations of fish to niche aquatic environments are still being discovered. The demands of aquatic life can be very different compared to those of an air-breathing terrestrial existence, and in many cases, a different range of functional adaptations has evolved in secondarily aquatic taxa.

We invite submissions on functional adaptations to aquatic life in both primarily and secondarily aquatic lineages, extant or extinct, in both original research and review papers, with the aim of further defining the needs of aquatic life. Topics could include sensory adaptations—electroreception, vision, and hearing, including echolocation—ventilation and gas exchange, locomotion, the hydrodynamics of swimming and diving, osmoregulation, and the physiology of life in a deep environment. Research into the comparative morphology of convergent or parallel evolution is particularly encouraged.

Dr. Peter S. Johnston
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Animals is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • functional morphology
  • aquatic animals
  • vertebrates
  • sensory systems
  • aquatic physiology
  • hydrodynamics
  • electroreception
  • echolocation

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

16 pages, 2980 KiB  
Article
Schooling Fish from a New, Multimodal Sensory Perspective
by Matz Larsson
Animals 2024, 14(13), 1984; https://doi.org/10.3390/ani14131984 - 5 Jul 2024
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 1851
Abstract
The acoustic hypothesis suggests that schooling can result in several benefits. (1) The acoustic pattern (AP) (pressure waves and other water movements) produced by swimming are likely to serve as signals within fish shoals, communicating useful spatial and temporal information between school members, [...] Read more.
The acoustic hypothesis suggests that schooling can result in several benefits. (1) The acoustic pattern (AP) (pressure waves and other water movements) produced by swimming are likely to serve as signals within fish shoals, communicating useful spatial and temporal information between school members, enabling synchronized locomotion and influencing join, stay or leave decisions and shoal assortment. (2) Schooling is likely to reduce the masking of environmental signals, e.g., by auditory grouping, and fish may achieve windows of silence by simultaneously stopping their movements. (3) A solitary swimming fish produces an uncomplicated AP that will give a nearby predator’s lateral line organ (LLO) excellent information, but, if extra fish join, they will produce increasingly complex and indecipherable APs. (4) Fishes swimming close to one another will also blur the electrosensory system (ESS) of predators. Since predators use multimodal information, and since information from the LLO and the ESS is more important than vision in many situations, schooling fish may acquire increased survival by confusing these sensory systems. The combined effects of such predator confusion and other acoustical benefits may contribute to why schooling became an adaptive success. A model encompassing the complex effects of synchronized group locomotion on LLO and ESS perception might increase the understanding of schooling behavior. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Functional Morphology and Adaptations of Aquatic Life)
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20 pages, 8806 KiB  
Article
Retinal Structure of Poecilia sphenops: Photoreceptor Mosaics, Synaptic Ribbon Patterns, and Glial Cell Expressions
by Doaa M. Mokhtar, Marco Albano, Rasha Alonaizan and Abdelraheim Attaai
Animals 2024, 14(6), 939; https://doi.org/10.3390/ani14060939 - 19 Mar 2024
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1735
Abstract
The specific arrangement and distribution of photoreceptors in the retina can vary among different fish species, with each species exhibiting adaptations related to its habitat, behavior, and visual requirements. Poecilia sphenops, a diurnal fish, was the focus of this study. The retinas [...] Read more.
The specific arrangement and distribution of photoreceptors in the retina can vary among different fish species, with each species exhibiting adaptations related to its habitat, behavior, and visual requirements. Poecilia sphenops, a diurnal fish, was the focus of this study. The retinas of a total of eighteen Molly fish were investigated utilizing light and electron microscopy. The retina exhibited a square mosaic pattern of the inner segments of cones. This pattern comprised double cones positioned along the sides of a square, with two types of single cones situated at the center and corners of the square arrangement across the entire retina. The corner cones were slightly shorter than the central ones. Additionally, the outer plexiform layer contained both cone pedicles and rod spherules. The rod spherule consisted of a single synaptic ribbon arranged in a triad or quadrat junctional arrangement within the invaginating free ends of the horizontal and bipolar cell processes. On the other hand, cone pedicles have more than one synaptic ribbon in their junctional complex. The inner nuclear layer consisted of the amacrine, bipolar, Müller, and horizontal cell bodies. Müller cell processes, expressing GFAP, extended across all retinal layers, segmenting the deeper retina into alternating fascicles of optic axons and ganglion cells. The outer and inner plexiform layers showed many astrocyte cell processes expressing GFAP. In conclusion, the current study is the first record of the retinal structures of Molly fish. This study illustrated the mosaic arrangement of photoreceptors and GFAP expression patterns of astrocytes and Müller cells. The presence of three cone types, coupled with a sufficient number of rods, likely facilitates motion awareness for tasks like finding food and performing elaborate mating ceremonies. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Functional Morphology and Adaptations of Aquatic Life)
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