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Acoustic Communication in Butterflyfishes: Anatomical Novelties, Physiology, Evolution, and Behavioral Ecology

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Fish Hearing and Bioacoustics

Part of the book series: Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology ((AEMB,volume 877))

Abstract

Coral reef fishes live in noisy environments that may challenge their capacity for acoustic communication. Butterflyfishes (Family Chaetodontidae) are prominent and ecologically diverse members of coral reef communities worldwide. The discovery of a novel association of anterior swim bladder horns with the lateral line canal system in the genus Chaetodon (the laterophysic connection) revealed a putative adaptation for enhancement of sound reception by the lateral line system and/or the ear. Behavioral studies show that acoustic communication is an important component of butterflyfish social behavior. All bannerfish (Forcipiger, Heniochus, and Hemitaurichthys) and Chaetodon species studied thus far produce several sound types at frequencies of <1 to >1000 Hz. Ancestral character state analyses predict the existence of both shared (head bob) and divergent (tail slap) acoustic behaviors in these two clades. Experimental auditory physiology shows that butterflyfishes are primarily sensitive to stimuli associated with hydrodynamic particle accelerations of ≤500 Hz. In addition, the gas-filled swim bladder horns in Chaetodon are stimulated by sound pressure, which enhances and extends their auditory sensitivity to 1700–2000 Hz. The broadband spectrum of ambient noise present on coral reefs overlaps with the frequency characteristics of their sounds, thus both the close social affiliations common among butterflyfishes and the evolution of the swim bladder horns in Chaetodon facilitate their short-range acoustic communication. Butterflyfishes provide a unique and unexpected opportunity to carry out studies of fish bioacoustics in the lab and the field that integrate the study of sensory anatomy, physiology, evolution, and behavioral ecology.

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank Drs. Arthur Popper and Richard Fay for intellectual inspiration, scientific and editorial advice and collaboration, for their mentorship, and in their roles as luminaries in the field of fish bioacoustics. Art Popper told JFW, then a young graduate student, to run with her lateral line project (it was initially a “side project”), which she did. He followed this up with a generous invitation to visit his lab to do extensive SEM work, which formed the basis for a chapter of her PhD dissertation, and inspiration for lateral line studies over the next several decades. JFW was asked by Art Popper and Dick Fay to co-organize a key conference on fish bioacoustics (2001), which was a great experience. They shared their invaluable editorial expertise in the course of preparing the co-edited 2008 SHAR volume on Fish Bioacoustics—their wisdom, collegiality, and mentorship will be long remembered. JFW thanks former graduate students Dr. W. Leo Smith, J. Luke Herman, and Christopher Woods (whose unpublished MS Thesis is cited herein), undergraduates Ryan Walsh, Nicole Cicchino, and Natasha Kelly, and Drs. Brandon Casper, Darlene Ketten, and David Mann for their contributions to our work on butterflyfishes.

TCT thanks Art Popper for giving him his first job as a doctoral student building wire-wrap amplifier circuits for hearing experiments at the Univeristy of Hawai’i, and also for sparking his interest to understand how and why fish hear in their natural environments. TCT thanks Dick Fay for his inspiration and friendship during his early days of neurobiology investigations at Washington University in St. Louis and Woods Hole. TCT also thanks his former undergraduate students Jon Dale and Emily Donham, and graduate students Kelly Boyle, Adam Dewan and Karen Maruska for their many hours together investigating the adaptive functions of hearing and sound production in coral reef fishes; and he thanks JFW, Whitlow Au, Marc Lammers, Joe Sisneros, David Mann, and John Allen III for many lively discussions on fish acoustic behaviors and hearing.

Research in the Webb Lab was supported by a HHMI grant to Villanova University (for support of undergraduates) and NSF grants IBN-9603896 and IBN-0132607. Research in the Tricas Lab was supported by NSF grant IBN-0137883; NOAA’s Undersea Research Program and Coral Reef Conservation Program, and the Hawai’i Undersea Research Laboratory under NOAA award NA05OAR4301108.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Hawai’i Institute of Marine Biology, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, 2538 The Mall, Edmondson Hall, Honolulu, HI, 96822, USA

    Timothy C. Tricas

  2. Department of Biological Sciences, University of Rhode Island, 120 Flagg Road, Kingston, RI, 02881, USA

    Jacqueline F. Webb

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  1. Timothy C. Tricas
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Correspondence to Timothy C. Tricas .

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  1. Department of Psychology, University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, USA

    Joseph A. Sisneros

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Tricas, T.C., Webb, J.F. (2016). Acoustic Communication in Butterflyfishes: Anatomical Novelties, Physiology, Evolution, and Behavioral Ecology. In: Sisneros, J. (eds) Fish Hearing and Bioacoustics. Advances in Experimental Medicine and Biology, vol 877. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-21059-9_5

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