SGER: UV Communication in Swordtails

许多动物都会体验到我们并不熟悉的环境。蝙蝠使用回声定位，一些昆虫感觉到底物的振动。我们最近发现，一种名为侏儒剑尾的鱼在紫外线(UV)中进行交流，紫外线对我们的皮肤而不是我们的眼睛敏感。雄性剑尾有一把剑延伸到尾鳍之外。我们之前的研究无意中排除了紫外线，但从未能够表明女性更喜欢有剑的男性而不是没有剑的男性。最近，我们发现剑会反射紫外线，当在含有紫外线的光(例如阳光)下测试时，雌性确实更喜欢带剑的雄性。因此，紫外线在涉及配偶选择的通信系统中扮演着关键的角色。我们还发现，剑尾的主要捕食者墨西哥河豚在紫外线中看不到。在这项拟议的研究中，我们将确定这些类型的鱼的紫外线通讯系统有多普遍，如果紫外线存在的变化影响动物的宫廷，视觉系统对紫外线的敏感度有多高，如果紫外线的存在不影响捕食者的狩猎成功，以及剑尾是否使用紫外线进行其他任务，如定位自己的猎物。这些研究承诺让我们深入了解这些动物的感官世界，这是以前未知的。

Many animals experience parts of the environment to which we are not privy. Bats use echolocation, some insects sense substrate vibrations. We recently found that a fish, the pygmy swordtail, communicates in the ultraviolet (UV)-- light to which our skin but not ours eyes are sensitive. Male swordtails have a sword that extends beyond the tail fin. Our previous studies, which inadvertently excluded UV, were never able to show that females preferred males with swords to those without swords. Recently we discovered that the sword reflects UV, and that when tested under light containing UV (e.g. sunlight) females do indeed prefer males with swords. Thus UV plays a critical role in the communication system involved in mate choice. We also found that the swordtail's major predator, the Mexican tetra, does not see in the UV. Thus males can increase their conspicuousness to females but not predators by adding UV reflectance to the sword.In the proposed study we will determine how general the UV communication system is in these types of fishes, if variation in the presence of UV influence when the animal's court, how sensitive the visual system is to UV, if the presence of UV does not influence the predator's hunting success, and if the swordtails use UV for other tasks, such as locating their own prey. These studies promise to give us insights into a sensory world of these animals that was previously unknown.