Our student Verity completed a Secondment in April 2022 in the Bass Lab at the Cornell University, a recently added new partner organisation in Zenith! Verity's project is focused on the vocal motor circuit of Danionella. The Bass Lab are the world leaders in the study of vocal motor circuits in fish. They mainly use midshipman as their model organism but have recently started working with Danionella dracula.
"The main goal of my secondment was to compare the vocalisations of the Danionella dracula at the Bass Lab with that of our Danioenella cerebrum. Using a high-speed video camera, I recorded the fish while they vocalised and was able to see the movement of the swim bladder during sound production. Although they are a closely related species with similar morphology, the structure of the sounds they produce are very different. Going forward, it will be interesting to see how this reflects the similarities and differences in their vocal-motor neural circuits."
Verity