Figure 4. Sensory cues and prey ingestion differentially regulate cH and LH neural activity.
(a) Representative images of activity induced by exposure of 7–8 dpf larval zebrafish to paramecia or artemia larvae, as examined by anti-pERK antibody staining. Hatched artemia are actively hunted but are too large to consume, allowing for the dissociation of sensory cues and hunting behavior from prey consumption. Scale bar = 50 μm. Rightmost two panels (top and bottom): Larval zebrafish hunt live artemia, performing J-turns and pursuits with eyes converged (see Video 4; Bianco et al., 2011). (b) cH activity (normalized pERK fluorescence intensity) is significantly reduced by exposure to paramecia but not by exposure to artemia (p = 0.016 (paramecia), 0.648 (artemia)). Asterisks denote p<0.05. (c) LH activity can be induced by artemia, and more strongly by paramecia. Both normalized pERK intensity (mLH: p = 2.06×10−5 (paramecia vs control), p = 7.09×10−4 (artemia vs control), p = 5.43×10−5 (artemia vs paramecia); lLH: p = 2.06×10−5 (paramecia vs control), p = 0.020 (artemia vs control), p = 0.0019 (artemia vs paramecia)) and active cell count (mLH: p = 2.06×10−5 (paramecia vs control), p = 9.58×10−5 (artemia vs control), p = 1.77×10−4 (artemia vs paramecia); lLH: p = 2.06×10−5 (paramecia vs control), p = 9.75×10−5 (artemia vs control), p = 9.86×10−5 (artemia vs paramecia)) are shown, with n = 9/9/11 fish, one-tailed Wilcoxon rank-sum test. Anti-pERK staining fluorescence was averaged over each entire region of interest (cH, mLH and lLH; see Materials and methods for details). The normalized anti-pERK staining intensity for each region (ROI) was obtained by dividing the anti-pERK fluorescence from each fish (in all experimental groups) by the average anti-pERK fluorescence for the same ROI of food-deprived (i.e. control) fish. We also compared the artemia-induced activity change (θA) to the paramecia-induced activity change (θP) for each lobe (see main text). (d) Differential neural activation of the cH and LH regions in response to prey sensation and hunting as compared to prey ingestion. Data plotted in Figure 4 are provided in Figure 4—source data 1.