Mormyrus longirostris, a species of fish belonging to the mormoryds, one of the families of electric fish studied by Schumacher and Carlson. Image credit: Joachim S Müller (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)
Larger animals tend to have larger brains and smaller animals tend to have smaller ones. However, some species do not fit the pattern that would be expected based on their body size. This variation between species can also apply to individual brain regions. This may be due to evolutionary forces shaping the brain when favouring particular behaviours. However, it is difficult to directly link changes in species behaviour and variations in brain structure.
One way to understand the impact of evolutionary adaptations is to study species that have developed new behaviours and compare them to related ones that lack such a behaviour. An opportunity to do this lies in the ability of several species of fish to produce and sense electric fields in water. While this system is not found in most fish, it has evolved multiple times independently in distantly-related lineages. Schumacher and Carlson examined whether differences in the size of brains and individual regions between species were associated with the evolution of electric field generation and sensing.
Micro-computed tomography, or μCT, scans of the brains of multiple fish species revealed that the species that can produce electricity – also known as ‘electrogenic’ species’ – have more similar brain structures to each other than to their close relatives that lack this ability. The brain regions involved in producing and detecting electrical charges were larger in these electrogenic fish. This similarity was apparent despite variations in how total brain size has evolved with body size across species.
These results demonstrate how evolutionary forces acting on particular behaviours can lead to predictable changes in brain structure. Understanding how and why brains evolve will allow researchers to better predict how species’ brains and behaviours may adapt as human activities alter their environments.
