TY - JOUR
T1 - Amphibious auditory responses of the American alligator (Alligator mississipiensis)
AU - Higgs, D. M.
AU - Brittan-Powell, E. F.
AU - Soares, D.
AU - Souza, M. J.
AU - Carr, C. E.
AU - Dooling, R. J.
AU - Popper, A. N.
N1 - Funding Information:
Acknowledgements This project would not have been possible without the interaction and collegial atmosphere provided by the Comparative and Evolutionary Biology of Hearing (CEBH) training program at the University of Maryland funded by National Institute of Deafness and other Communicative Disorders (T32 DC-00046) of the National Institutes of Health, which also provided trainee support to D.M.H. and B.B.P. Further support was provided by NIH DC04502-01 (D.M.H.), NIH DC0019 8 (B.B.P and R.J.D), and NIH DCD00436 (D.S. and C.E.C.). We would also like to thank Dr. Ruth Elsey at the Rockefeller Wildlife Refuge for providing the alligators, Dr. Adam Britton for providing information on alligator vocalizations, Dr. Geoffrey Manley for critically reading a draft of the manuscript, and Dr. Ole Larsen for technical assistance.
PY - 2002/4/1
Y1 - 2002/4/1
N2 - Animals that thrive both on land and underwater are faced with the task of interpreting stimuli in different media. This becomes a challenge to the sensory receptors in that stimuli (e.g., sound, motion) may convey the same type of information but are transmitted with different physical characteristics. We used auditory brainstem responses to examine hearing abilities of a species that makes full use of these two environments, the American alligator (Alligator mississipiensis). In water, alligators responded to tones from 100 Hz to 2,000 Hz, with peak sensitivity at 800 Hz. In air, they responded to tones from 100 Hz to 8,000 Hz, with peak sensitivity around 1,000 Hz. We also examined the contribution to hearing of an air bubble that becomes trapped in the middle ear as the animal submerges. This bubble has been previously implicated in underwater hearing. Our studies show that the trapped air bubble has no affect on auditory thresholds, suggesting the bubble is not an important adaptation for underwater hearing in this species.
AB - Animals that thrive both on land and underwater are faced with the task of interpreting stimuli in different media. This becomes a challenge to the sensory receptors in that stimuli (e.g., sound, motion) may convey the same type of information but are transmitted with different physical characteristics. We used auditory brainstem responses to examine hearing abilities of a species that makes full use of these two environments, the American alligator (Alligator mississipiensis). In water, alligators responded to tones from 100 Hz to 2,000 Hz, with peak sensitivity at 800 Hz. In air, they responded to tones from 100 Hz to 8,000 Hz, with peak sensitivity around 1,000 Hz. We also examined the contribution to hearing of an air bubble that becomes trapped in the middle ear as the animal submerges. This bubble has been previously implicated in underwater hearing. Our studies show that the trapped air bubble has no affect on auditory thresholds, suggesting the bubble is not an important adaptation for underwater hearing in this species.
KW - American alligator
KW - Auditory brainstem response
KW - Auditory threshold
KW - Crocodilia
KW - Hearing
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U2 - 10.1007/s00359-002-0296-8
DO - 10.1007/s00359-002-0296-8
M3 - Article
C2 - 11976890
AN - SCOPUS:0036557639
SN - 0340-7594
VL - 188
SP - 217
EP - 223
JO - Journal of Comparative Physiology A: Neuroethology, Sensory, Neural, and Behavioral Physiology
JF - Journal of Comparative Physiology A: Neuroethology, Sensory, Neural, and Behavioral Physiology
IS - 3
ER -