title: The coelacanth rostral organ is a unique low-resolution electro-detector that facilitates the feeding strike.
abstract: The cartilaginous and non-neopterygian bony fishes have an electric sense typically comprised of hundreds or thousands of sensory canals distributed in broad clusters over the head. This morphology facilitates neural encoding of local electric field intensity, orientation, and polarity, used for determining the position of nearby prey. The coelacanth rostral organ electric sense, however, is unique in having only three paired sensory canals with distribution restricted to the dorsal snout, raising questions about its function. To address this, we employed magnetic resonance imaging methods to map electrosensory canal morphology in the extant coelacanth, Latimeria chalumnae, and a simple dipole 'rabbit ears' antennae model with toroidal gain function to approximate their directional sensitivity. This identified a unique focal region of electrosensitivity directly in front of the mouth, and is the first evidence of a low-resolution electro-detector that solely facilitates prey ingestion.
authors.affiliation: Center for Scientific Computation in Imaging, Department of Radiology, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California 92037.
authors.forename: Rachel M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Berquist
authors.affiliation: 1] Center for Scientific Computation in Imaging, Department of Radiology, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California 92037 [2] Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California 92093.
authors.forename: Vitaly L
authors.initials: VL
authors.lastname: Galinsky
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Florida 33431.
authors.forename: Stephen M
authors.initials: SM
authors.lastname: Kajiura
authors.affiliation: 1] Center for Scientific Computation in Imaging, Department of Radiology, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, California 92037 [2] VA San Diego Healthcare System, San Diego, California 92161.
authors.forename: Lawrence R
authors.initials: LR
authors.lastname: Frank
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005399:Fishes / Q000033:anatomy & histology* / Q000502:physiology*; D008954:Models, Biological