Major patterns of visual brain organization in teleosts and their relation to prehistoric events and the paleontological record

Wullimann, Mario F. (1997): Major patterns of visual brain organization in teleosts and their relation to prehistoric events and the paleontological record. In: Paleobiology, Vol. 23, No. 1: pp. 101-114

Abstract

A cladistic analysis of the three recognized patterns of central nervous visual organization among teleosts reveals that there is a pattern of intermediate complexity representing the plesiomorphic condition for teleosts, and that there is a simple visual pattern in two unrelated teleost groups which can be concluded to be a secondarily reduced derived condition, as well as an elaborate pattern which is present only in acanthomorph teleosts, thus likely representing a synapomorphy for this taxon. The elaborate central nervous visual pattern, therefore, is one of many functional-anatomical advanced features characterizing the acanthomorphs. Furthermore, when neontological and paleontological data is compared with the paleoecological record of early acanthomorph history during the Late Cretaceous, it is consistent with a hypothesis that this acanthomorph synapomorphic functional-anatomical complex arose likely in ctenothrissiforms as an adaptation to the life in the reorganizing reefs of that geologic period.

• Item Type: Journal article
• Faculties: Biology > Department Biology II > Neurobiology
• Subjects: 500 Science > 570 Life sciences; biology
• ISSN: 0094-8373
• Language: English