Abstract

The fear, flight or fight response serves as the fundamental physiological basis for examining an organism's awareness of its environment under an impending predator attack. Although it is not known whether invertebrates posses an autonomic nervous system identical to that of vertebrates, evidence shows invertebrates have a sympathetic-like response to regulate the internal environment and ready the organism to act behaviorally to a given stimuli. Furthermore, this physiological response can be feasibly measured and it acts as a biological index for the animal's internal state. Measurements of the physiological response can be directly related to internal and external stressors through changes in the central nervous system controlled coordination of the cardio-vascular and respiratory systems. More specifically, monitoring heart and ventilation rates provide quantifiable measures of the stress response not always behaviorally observed. Crayfish are good model organisms for heart and ventilatory rate measurements due to the feasibility of recording, as well as the rich history known of the morphology of the crayfish, dating back to Huxley in 1888, and the well-studied typical behaviors.

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

10-15-2009

Notes/Citation Information

Published in Journal of Visualized Experiments, v. 32, e1594, p. 1-4.

Copyright © 2009 Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

http://dx.doi.org/10.3791/1594

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