Study finds first example of auditory regression in a subterranean organism
Thursday, March 28, 2013 - 09:00
in Biology & Nature
(Phys.org) —A team of researchers made up of members from the U.S. and Canada has found that two species of fish that live in caves in the eastern and central parts of the United States have suffered hearing regression as a result of their environment—the first such example ever found. In their paper published in the journal Biology Letters, the group describes how they compared two species of cave dwelling fish with a close cousin that lives in a surface lake, and found that the subterranean dwellers had lost the ability to hear some high frequency sounds.