Event:

Our environment is complex and dynamic, yet we only perceive only a small fraction of our surroundings. Indeed, evolution has shaped sensory systems to detect the most relevant information depending on an organism’s specific lifestyle or ecological niche. Understanding how sensory systems adapt to mediate perception can broadly inform us about the evolution of novel traits. Given the incredible breadth of sensory modalities that exist across nature, exploration of these systems has benefitted from consideration of both conventional research organisms paired with studies of unusual organisms with unique or exaggerated abilities that promise to reveal new biology and conserved principals in sensory physiology. While in many cases adaptation is driven by modification of existing sensory systems, a major outstanding question concerns how a new sensory modality evolves. I explore this question in a range of diverse biological contexts, including touch-taste sensation in the sucker cups of octopus and squid, and more recently in an unusual family of fishes called sea robins. Sea robins possess six unusual "leg"-like appendages that represent detached pectoral fin-rays specialized to function as sense organs that mediate sensation of chemical and tactile stimuli. Here, I will discuss the molecular basis underlying the emergence of new sensory systems and how they adapt to facilitate sophisticated behaviors using cephalopods and sea robins as models.