The peculiar location of fishing motor neurons, with little doubt, is linked with the specialization of the illicium serving fishing behavior, the team said in a study recently published in the Journal of Comparative Neurology.
If the same types of motor neurons control non-moving fins in both species, the frogfish has something extra when it comes to the function and location of motor neurons controlling the illicium.
Yamamoto thinks the unique group of fishing motor neurons found in frogfish suggests that, as a result of evolution, the motor neurons for the illicium [became] segregated from other motor neurons.
What exactly caused the functional and locational shift of motor neurons that give the frogfish's illicium its function is still a mystery. How the brain influences their fishing behavior is another area that needs to be investigated.
Collection
[
|
...
]