A locomotor innovation enables water-land transition in a marine fish.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Morphological innovations that significantly enhance performance capacity may enable exploitation of new resources and invasion of new ecological niches. The invasion of land from the aquatic realm requires dramatic structural and physiological modifications to permit survival in a gravity-dominated, aerial environment. Most fishes are obligatorily aquatic, with amphibious fishes typically making slow-moving and short forays on to land.

Methodology/principal findings

Here I describe the behaviors and movements of a little known marine fish that moves extraordinarily rapidly on land. I found that the Pacific leaping blenny, Alticus arnoldorum, employs a tail-twisting movement on land, previously unreported in fishes. Focal point behavioral observations of Alticus s

SUBMITTER: Hsieh ST 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2887833 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature