The complexity of fish communication in human-disturbed environments: a comment on Radford et al.

摘要

Fishes use several signaling systems to communicate with each other, including visual, chemical, acoustic, vibrational, and electrical signals (Ladich et al. 2006). Most attention has so far focused on the use of visual and olfactory signals in communication, but an increasing number of studies show that some fishes also use sound, as discussed in the excellent review by Radford et al. (2014). The production and perception of sound is more complicated in water than on land because most fishes—in contrast to land organisms and aquatic mammals—cannot produce sound by breathing air. Moreover, sound travels 4 times faster in water, which makes it harder to determine the direction of sound and also increases background noise. Yet, several fish species have overcome these problems, and by combining sound with signals in other sensory modalities, such as colors or odors, have found efficient ways of transmitting their messages to receivers in a wide range of contexts from disputes over resources to finding a mate.