ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Neuroanat.
Volume 19 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fnana.2025.1589687
Variation in behavioral preference and calcium binding expression in two synodontid catfishes with different communication modalities
Provisionally accepted
- University of Graz, Graz, Austria
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Animals use different communication modalities for social interactions, often showing sensory adaptations linked to their preferred signalling system. How such adaptations affect individual processing centers usually remains elusive due to interspecies differences. One system in which such adaptations can be investigated are synodontid catfish. Synodontids generally use acoustic signals for social communication, but in some species, they generate electric signals. This allows to investigate adaptations of networks associated with social signal detection in closely related species. We investigated potential sensory adaptations in two synodontid species (Synodontis grandiops - SG and Synodontis nigriventris - SN) with different communication channels. We tested their behavioural preferences towards different sensory modalities and found strong preferences for conspecifics. To investigate potential adaptations at the cellular level, we focused on the torus semicircularis (TS), a major midbrain sensory hub for auditory and electric sensory processing. We found an increase in projections from the anterior tuberal nucleus (AT) to the lateral TS (TSl, which processes electrosensory information) in SN, but no difference in the projections from the central TS (TSc) to AT in either species. An enhanced density of calcium binding proteins in the TSl was found only in SN. As electrocommunication is a derived communication channel in synodontids, our findings suggest that a shift to electric communication may have led to (i) stronger projections to and from sensory regions, and (ii) a change in neurochemical profile, which together might facilitate social signal detection.
Keywords: Synodontis, calcium binding proteins, parvalbumin, calretinin, social preference, calbindin, Neuroanatomy, social communication
Received: 07 Mar 2025; Accepted: 11 Jul 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Corrales Parada, Udovičić, Hashei and Chagnaud. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Carlos Daniel Corrales Parada, University of Graz, Graz, Austria
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