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      A Locomotor Innovation Enables Water-Land Transition in a Marine Fish

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      PLoS ONE
      Public Library of Science

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          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 show that they have largely abandoned the marine realm, feed and reproduce on land, and even defend terrestrial territories. Comparisons of these blennies' terrestrial kinematic and kinetic (i.e., force) measurements with those of less terrestrial sister genera show A. arnoldorum move with greater stability and locomotor control, and can move away more rapidly from impending threats.

          Conclusions/Significance

          My results demonstrate that axial tail twisting serves as a key innovation enabling invasion of a novel marine niche. This paper highlights the potential of using this system to address general evolutionary questions about water-land transitions and niche invasions.

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          Most cited references15

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          A Devonian tetrapod-like fish and the evolution of the tetrapod body plan.

          The relationship of limbed vertebrates (tetrapods) to lobe-finned fish (sarcopterygians) is well established, but the origin of major tetrapod features has remained obscure for lack of fossils that document the sequence of evolutionary changes. Here we report the discovery of a well-preserved species of fossil sarcopterygian fish from the Late Devonian of Arctic Canada that represents an intermediate between fish with fins and tetrapods with limbs, and provides unique insights into how and in what order important tetrapod characters arose. Although the body scales, fin rays, lower jaw and palate are comparable to those in more primitive sarcopterygians, the new species also has a shortened skull roof, a modified ear region, a mobile neck, a functional wrist joint, and other features that presage tetrapod conditions. The morphological features and geological setting of this new animal are suggestive of life in shallow-water, marginal and subaerial habitats.
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            The kinematics and performance of fish fast-start swimming

            Fast-starts are brief, sudden accelerations used by fish during predator­prey encounters. The kinematics and performance of fish during fast-start manoeuvres have received a lot of attention since they may determine the outcome of predator­prey interactions in terms of feeding success or survival. We will discuss recent progress on (1) the kinematics of escape responses and feeding strikes, (2) the fast-start performance of species with different body morphologies and from different habitats, and (3) the functional significance of fast-start kinematics and performance within the context of predator­prey interactions.
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              Biomechanical features of gait waveform data associated with knee osteoarthritis: an application of principal component analysis.

              This study compared the gait of 50 patients with end-stage knee osteoarthritis to a group of 63 age-matched asymptomatic control subjects. The analysis focused on three gait waveform measures that were selected based on previous literature demonstrating their relevance to knee osteoarthritis (OA): the knee flexion angle, flexion moment, and adduction moment. The objective was to determine the biomechanical features of these gait measures related to knee osteoarthritis. Principal component analysis was used as a data reduction tool, as well as a preliminary step for further analysis to determine gait pattern differences between the OA and the control groups. These further analyses included statistical hypothesis testing to detect group differences, and discriminant analysis to quantify overall group separation and to establish a hierarchy of discriminatory ability among the gait waveform features. The two groups were separated with a misclassification rate (estimated by cross-validation) of 8%. The discriminatory features of the gait waveforms were, in order of their discriminatory ability: the amplitude of the flexion moment, the range of motion of the flexion angle, the magnitude of the flexion moment during early stance, and the magnitude of the adduction moment during stance.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, USA )
                1932-6203
                2010
                18 June 2010
                : 5
                : 6
                : e11197
                Affiliations
                [1]Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States of America
                Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon, France
                Author notes

                Conceived and designed the experiments: STTH. Performed the experiments: STTH. Analyzed the data: STTH. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: STTH. Wrote the paper: STTH.

                [¤]

                Current address: Department of Biology, Temple University, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States of America

                Article
                10-PONE-RA-16382R1
                10.1371/journal.pone.0011197
                2887833
                20585564
                bf0a8734-acd7-4212-869d-4529b1f876c7
                Shi-Tong Tonia Hsieh. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
                History
                : 17 February 2010
                : 19 May 2010
                Page count
                Pages: 9
                Categories
                Research Article
                Ecology/Marine and Freshwater Ecology
                Evolutionary Biology/Animal Behavior
                Evolutionary Biology/Evolutionary Ecology

                Uncategorized
                Uncategorized

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