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Microhabitat Use Affects Brain Size And Structure In Intertidal Gobies, Gemma E. White, Culum Brown
Microhabitat Use Affects Brain Size And Structure In Intertidal Gobies, Gemma E. White, Culum Brown
Culum Brown, PhD
The ecological cognition hypothesis poses that the brains and behaviours of individuals are largely shaped by the environments in which they live and the associated challenges they must overcome during their lives. Here we examine the effect of environmental complexity on relative brain size in 4 species of intertidal gobies from differing habitats. Two species were rock pool specialists that lived on spatially complex rocky shores, while the remainder lived on dynamic, but structurally simple, sandy shores. We found that rock pool-dwelling species had relatively larger brains and telencephalons in particular, while sand-dwelling species had a larger optic tectum and …
Variation In Brain Morphology Of Intertidal Gobies: A Comparison Of Methodologies Used To Quantitatively Assess Brain Volumes In Fish, Gemma E. White, Culum Brown
Variation In Brain Morphology Of Intertidal Gobies: A Comparison Of Methodologies Used To Quantitatively Assess Brain Volumes In Fish, Gemma E. White, Culum Brown
Culum Brown, PhD
When correlating brain size and structure with behavioural and environmental characteristics, a range of techniques can be utilised. This study used gobiid fishes to quantitatively compare brain volumes obtained via three different methods; these included the commonly used techniques of histology and approximating brain volume to an idealised ellipsoid, and the recently established technique of X-ray micro-computed tomography (micro-CT). It was found that all three methods differed significantly from one another in their volume estimates for most brain lobes. The ellipsoid method was prone to over- or under-estimation of lobe size, histology caused shrinkage in the telencephalon, and although micro-CT …