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In 1986, neuroscientist Andrew Bass had just landed a job as an assistant professor at Cornell University when he decided to pay a visit to the Steinhart Aquarium in San Francisco to see the facility’s plainfin midshipman (Porichthys notatus), a foot-long, wide-lipped toadfish that lives along the coast of California. But it turned out he was in for something even better than watching the fish swim on the other side of aquarium glass. A staff member at the aquarium knew of midshipman nests in Tomales Bay, a little more than an hour’s drive north of the city. So Bass got in the car to see the animals in their natural habitat.
FISH TALK: Midshipman fish produce a few different calls, including grunts, growls, and hums.J EXP BIOL, 217:2377-89, 2014; COURTESY OF ANDREW BASSAs Bass stood on the rocky shore that evening, he heard a low rumble emanating from the water. It was male fish, humming, doing their best to lure females to their dens. “I’ll never forget it,” he says. “They were chorusing!”
Since that California night 30 years ago, Bass has revealed the intricacies of the midshipman’s calls—territorial grunts and growls in addition to mating hums—and the corresponding anatomy, neural circuitry, and hormonal control that governs the acoustic behavior. Just a few months ago, for instance, he figured out that melatonin in the sound-production regions of the midshipman brain is responsible for maintaining a circadian rhythm to the fish’s singing (Curr Biol, 26:2681-89, 2016).
While the midshipman’s ...
