Week 7 Convergent Evolution and Commuication

Link to Electric Fish Lab Handout

GENERAL EXPECTATIONS

So many amazing things can be studied with Electric Fish.

They have evolved independently in Africa and South America. We will have representatives from each continent. Not only have they evolved independently, two different types of electric signals have evolved on each contentent, waves, and pulses.

We will identify species according to morphology and electrical output.

We will investigate the electrical field around one species, to test a hypothesis of "lateralization".

We will assay the effect of environmental fluctuation (temperature) on the electrical output.

We will investigate the fish's ability to communicate with electrical signals.

We will observe how the electical sigals change with different behaviors.

TO BE EVALUATED

There will be no lab write up at all.

Every student is expected to keep their own lab notebook and not rely on the notebook of a labmate, however when data is recorded it need not be copied, a clear statement of where the data is recorded is sufficient.
Lab notebooks will be evaluated!