Ichthyology articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    The origin and early evolution of large scales in bony fishes and small scales in cartilaginous fishes are unclear. Here, the authors report a 425-million-year-old fish, Entelognathus, with a mosaic of scale and fin spine characters.

    • Xindong Cui
    • , Matt Friedman
    •  & Min Zhu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, the authors report two fossil lampreys, jawless vertebrates, from the Middle-Late Jurassic fossil Lagerstätte Yanliao Biota of North China. These large lampreys have an extensively toothed feeding apparatus resembling the Southern Hemisphere pouched lamprey, suggesting an ancestral predatory habit and southern origin of living lampreys.

    • Feixiang Wu
    • , Philippe Janvier
    •  & Chi Zhang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Mechanisms by which aquatic animals optimize their tailbeat frequency for swimming have not been fully explained. Here, the authors propose scaling laws for undulatory swimmers, relating beat frequency to length considering muscle biology and fluid interaction.

    • Jesús Sánchez-Rodríguez
    • , Christophe Raufaste
    •  & Médéric Argentina

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Amazonian blackwaters are acidic and physiologically-challenging, but are one of Earth’s most diversified ecosystems. This study revealed that fish survival in these hostile habitats depends on the colonization of their gills by endogenous blackwater Betaproteobacteria, with the potential to regulate host ionoregulatory processes.

    • Sylvain François-Étienne
    • , Leroux Nicolas
    •  & Derome Nicolas

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Using two different mass spectrometric platforms, authors demonstrate how metabolomic data fusion and multivariate analysis can be used to accurately identify the geographic origin and production method of salmon.

    • Yunhe Hong
    • , Nicholas Birse
    •  & Christopher T. Elliott

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Although diverse species of teleost fishes are present in polar waters, sharks and rays are relatively rare. This study presents analyses to explain this biodiversity pattern, showing that among-species thermal sensitivity of resting metabolic rates is lower than within-species sensitivity in teleosts, but not in sharks and rays.

    • Yuuki Y. Watanabe
    •  & Nicholas L. Payne

  • Article
    | Open Access

    It is unclear how Lungfishes evolved durophagy, the consumption of hard prey, despite being the longest lineage of vertebrates with this feeding mechanism. Here, the authors describe exceptionally preserved fossils of Youngolepis from the Early Devonian, showing early adaptations to durophagy.

    • Xindong Cui
    • , Matt Friedman
    •  & Min Zhu

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The importance of learning for brood parasites is explored using cuckoo catfish. The catfish increase their parasitism success as they gain experience, mainly by improving their social coordination and timing of intrusions to cichlid host spawnings.

    • Holger Zimmermann
    • , Radim Blažek
    •  & Martin Reichard

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Cichlids are a model for adaptive radiation, but the timing of their diversification is debated. Here the authors assemble 14 cichlid genomes, introduce a Bayesian approach to account for fossil-assignment uncertainty, and present a dated phylogenomic hypothesis of cichlid and teleost evolution.

    • Michael Matschiner
    • , Astrid Böhne
    •  & Walter Salzburger

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Whether and how fish might benefit from swimming in schools is an ongoing intriguing debate. Li et al. conduct experiments with biomimetic robots and also with real fish to reveal a new behavioural strategy by which followers can exploit the vortices shed by a near neighbour.

    • Liang Li
    • , Máté Nagy
    •  & Iain D. Couzin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Recent studies have suggested that hybridization can facilitate adaptive radiations. Here, the authors show that opportunity for hybridization differentiates Lake Mweru, where cichlids radiated, and Lake Bangweulu, where cichlids did not radiate despite ecological opportunity in both lakes.

    • Joana I. Meier
    • , Rike B. Stelkens
    •  & Ole Seehausen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    A single species of electric eel, Electrophorus electricus, has been described. Here, de Santana et al. show that there are three major lineages of Electrophorus distributed across Greater Amazonia and describe two new species, one with a much stronger electric discharge than was previously known.

    • C. David de Santana
    • , William G. R. Crampton
    •  & Wolmar B. Wosiacki

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In some species with internal fertilization, females can mate with multiple males and then manipulate which sperm fertilize the eggs. Here, Alonzo et al.find that by releasing ovarian fluid along with their eggs, female ocellated wrasse are able to influence paternity despite having external fertilization.

    • Suzanne H. Alonzo
    • , Kelly A. Stiver
    •  & Susan E. Marsh-Rollo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Sharks’ dorsal fins are thought to assist propulsion and turns while pectoral fins are thought to oppose sharks’ negative buoyancy. Here, Payne and colleagues show that hammerhead sharks use an exaggerated dorsal fin to generate lift by swimming on their side.

    • Nicholas L. Payne
    • , Gil Iosilevskii
    •  & Yuuki Y. Watanabe

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Within species, there tends to be a tight relationship between genital size and body size, suggesting strong stabilizing selection. Here, Booksmythe et al.artificially select relative genital size in mosquitofish and find that novel genital size-body size combinations do not lead to expected fitness reductions.

    • Isobel Booksmythe
    • , Megan L. Head
    •  & Michael D. Jennions

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Understanding climatic adaptation in fish is limited by a lack of large-scale, long term acclimation studies. Here, Sandblom et al. show that fish exposed to a 5-10 °C increase in water temperature next to a nuclear power plant display contrasting upper and lower cardiorespiratory thermal compensation limits.

    • Erik Sandblom
    • , Timothy D. Clark
    •  & Fredrik Jutfelt

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Live birth and an annual life cycle potentially enable access to new ecological niches and subsequent species diversification. Here, Helmstetter et al.build the phylogeny for fish in the order Cyprinodontiformes and find that, though live birth and annualism have each evolved multiple times, only live birth is associated with increased diversification.

    • Andrew J. Helmstetter
    • , Alexander S. T. Papadopulos
    •  & Vincent Savolainen

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Suspension-feeding fish, such as goldfish and whale sharks, retain prey without clogging their oral filter. Using a cross-step filtration model based on fish morphology, Sanderson et al. show how vortices generated by this design could trap and transport particles even smaller than the filter pores.

    • S. Laurie Sanderson
    • , Erin Roberts
    •  & Hannah Brooks

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Head movements of swimming fishes are thought to exist only because of recoil of the oscillating tail. Here, Akanyeti et al. show that by controlling the timing of head movements, fish can improve their swimming efficiency while simultaneously optimizing sensing and respiration.

    • O. Akanyeti
    • , P. J. M. Thornycroft
    •  & J. C. Liao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Little evidence exists on whether human-generated noise directly affects survival of wildlife. Here, Simpson et al. show that damselfish exposed to motorboat noise have elevated metabolic rates, reduced responses to predatory attacks, and suffer increased predation compared to fish in ambient conditions.

    • Stephen D. Simpson
    • , Andrew N. Radford
    •  & Mark G. Meekan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Animals tracking objects can adapt their movements to optimise sensory coding. Using fish that sense objects as perturbations to an electric field, Clarke et al. reveal that the optimal object distance maintained by the fish is encoded within the firing properties of electrosensory neurons.

    • Stephen E. Clarke
    • , André Longtin
    •  & Leonard Maler

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Swimming animals are generally assumed to generate forward thrust by pushing surrounding water rearwards. Here, Gemmell et al.show that efficient swimming in lampreys and jellyfish is achieved primarily through suction, as vortex-associated low pressure regions are synchronized by undulations of the body.

    • Brad J. Gemmell
    • , Sean P. Colin
    •  & John O. Dabiri

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Migration of adult American eels from the coast to their spawning area in the Sargasso Sea have previously only been inferred from larval distributions. Here, Béguer-Pon et al. track adult eels from the continental shelf into the open ocean, with one individual migrating to the northern limit of the spawning site.

    • Mélanie Béguer-Pon
    • , Martin Castonguay
    •  & Julian J. Dodson

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Weakly electric fish species use low-voltage to sense their surroundings, whereas a few strongly electric species use high-voltage as a weapon. Here the author shows that electric eels cross this boundary, using high-voltage simultaneously as a stunning weapon and as an electrical radar system to track fast-moving prey.

    • Kenneth C. Catania

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The presence of a pulmonary system in fossil coelacanths has only recently been identified, with little known about homologues in living species. Here, Cupello et al. confirm the presence of a lung in the extant species Latimeria chalumnaeand report its growth during different stages of development.

    • Camila Cupello
    • , Paulo M. Brito
    •  & Gaël Clément

  • Article
    | Open Access

    In species in which females mate with multiple partners, sexual selection acts on male traits involved in mating and fertilization. Here, the authors show that selection acting before and after mating explains a significant component of variance in male reproductive fitness in a livebearing fish.

    • Alessandro Devigili
    • , Jonathan P. Evans
    •  & Andrea Pilastro

  • Article |

    Intraspecific variation is known to cascade evolutionary change down through food webs, although bottom-up changes are less well described. Here, Brodersenet al. show that life history change in a prey fish species, mediated through anthropogenic activity, can promote phenotypic diversification of its top predator.

    • Jakob Brodersen
    • , Jennifer G. Howeth
    •  & David M. Post

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Reductions in winter duration under climate change may have negative consequences for ectotherms adapted to seasonal temperature regimes. Here Farmeret al. show how short winters have, in part, caused failed lake fishery recruitment by altering spawning phenology and lowering the quality of eggs and larvae.

    • Troy M. Farmer
    • , Elizabeth A. Marschall
    •  & Stuart A. Ludsin

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Claspers are copulatory organs found in male cartilaginous fishes. Here, the authors show that androgen receptor signalling maintains the Shh pathway to promote clasper development in male skates and suggest the importance of hormonal regulation in the evolution of male copulatory organs.

    • Katherine L. O’Shaughnessy
    • , Randall D. Dahn
    •  & Martin J. Cohn

  • Article |

    Seahorses are very slow swimmers, yet they are specialized hunters of fast and evasive prey. Here the authors show that seahorse head morphology functions to create a zone of minimum hydrodynamic disturbance, which allows the seahorse to slowly approach the prey, and to position itself within capture range.

    • Brad J. Gemmell
    • , Jian Sheng
    •  & Edward J. Buskey

  • Article |

    Body clocks modulate physiological processes to follow a day–night cycle, but whether animals exposed to constant darkness express circadian rhythms is unknown. Here the authors examine the expression of circadian genes in Mexican cavefish, and find that these resemble a pattern expected from exposure to constant daylight.

    • Andrew Beale
    • , Christophe Guibal
    •  & David Whitmore

  • Article |

    Deep-sea coelacanth female fish were thought to enhance genetic variability in their offspring by mating with multiple males. Here, Lampert et al.analyse the paternity of the offspring of two females, and present evidence that coelacanth females are in fact monogamous.

    • Kathrin P. Lampert
    • , Katrin Blassmann
    •  & Manfred Schartl

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The saccus vasculosus is a circumventricular organ of the hypothalamus of many jawed fish whose function has remained a mystery for more than 300 years. Here the authors provide evidence that the saccus vasculosus functions as a sensor of seasonal changes in day length.

    • Yusuke Nakane
    • , Keisuke Ikegami
    •  & Takashi Yoshimura

  • Article |

    Referential gestures such as pointing direct attention towards an object and have only been observed in apes and ravens. Vail et al. show that fish signal to indicate the location of hidden prey to hunting partners, demonstrating that referential gestures are not restricted to large-brained species.

    • Alexander L. Vail
    • , Andrea Manica
    •  & Redouan Bshary

  • Article |

    Electrophysiological studies in some fish species suggest that proprioception is needed for fin movement. Here the authors test mechanosensory abilities of afferent nerves in pectoral fin rays, and find that the activity of fin ray nerve fibres reflects the amplitude and velocity of fin ray bending.

    • Richard Williams IV
    • , Nicole Neubarth
    •  & Melina E. Hale

  • Article |

    For parents, sons are more evolutionarily lucrative than daughters if sons get more chances to breed (and vice versa). Kahn et al. find that mosquitofish take advantage of this: they anticipate the future mating prospects of their offspring and bias production towards the sex with greater opportunities.

    • Andrew T. Kahn
    • , Hanna Kokko
    •  & Michael D. Jennions

  • Article |

    In alloparental brood care, individuals help raise the offspring of others and it is thought that high relatedness between the helpers and recipients is needed. In contrast, Zöttlet al. find that, in cooperatively breeding cichlids, unrelated subordinate females provide more alloparental care than related ones.

    • Markus Zöttl
    • , Dik Heg
    •  & Michael Taborsky

  • Article |

    The health benefits of massage therapy, like the reduction of stress, have so far only been shown in humans. This study uses modelling to demonstrate that, while visiting cleaner fish to have ectoparasites removed, the physical stimulation also acts to reduce stress in the coral reef fish,Ctenochaetus striatus.

    • Marta C. Soares
    • , Rui F. Oliveira
    •  & Redouan Bshary

  • Article |

    Ampullary organs are involved in electroreception, but whether these are derived from placodes, thickened ectoderm, is unclear. In this study, the ampullary organs of the primitive ray-finned fish,Polyodon spathula, are shown to develop from lateral line placodes, suggesting that this is the ancestral state in bony fishes.

    • Melinda S. Modrell
    • , William E. Bemis
    •  & Clare V.H. Baker

  • Article |

    Many organisms are responding to a warming climate by shifts in spatial distribution. The poleward movement of silver hake,Merluccius bilinearis, over the last forty years is related to the position of the Gulf Stream and Atlantic meridional overturning circulation through changes in local bottom water temperature.

    • Janet A. Nye
    • , Terrence M. Joyce
    •  & Jason S. Link

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Little is known about the reproductive ecology of freshwater eels. In this article, the authors describe the capture of two species of eels together with eggs and newly hatched larvae, and suggest that spawning takes place during the new moon at shallower depths than previously thought.

    • Katsumi Tsukamoto
    • , Seinen Chow
    •  & Hideki Tanaka

  • Article |

    Seahorses evolved from pipefish, which have a remarkably different body shape. Here, by examining seahorse feeding behaviour and using a mathematical model, Van Wassenberghet al. demonstrate that the head, neck and trunk posture of the seahorse allows for the effective capture of their prey.

    • Sam Van Wassenbergh
    • , Gert Roos
    •  & Lara Ferry

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