Semester
Spring
Date of Graduation
2019
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Type
PhD
College
Eberly College of Arts and Sciences
Department
Biology
Committee Chair
Gary Marsat
Committee Co-Chair
Andrew Dacks
Committee Member
Andrew Dacks
Committee Member
Kevin Daly
Committee Member
Sarah Farris
Committee Member
G. Troy Smith
Abstract
Sensory systems have to extract useful information from environments awash in noise and confounding input. Studying how salient signals are encoded and filtered from these natural backgrounds is a key problem in neuroscience. Communication is a particularly tractable tool for studying this problem, as it is a ubiquitous task that all organisms must accomplish, easily compared across species, and is of significant ethological relevance. In this chapter I describe the current knowledge of what is both known and still unknown about how sensory systems are adapted for the challenges of encoding conspecific signals, particularly in environments complicated by conspecific-generated noise. The second half of this chapter describes why weakly electric fish are particularly suited to investigating how communication can shape the nervous system to accomplish this task.
Recommended Citation
Allen, Kathryne M., "Amazon Nights II: Electric Boogaloo-Neural Adaptations for Communication in Three Species of Weakly Electric FIsh" (2019). Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports. 3823.
https://researchrepository.wvu.edu/etd/3823