There is no doubt that Carl's group is of the opinion that behavioral actions predate speciation in the fish. It was always the mantra that only same kinds respond to the same signals. I worked form Carl in the 80s. I never saw the *behaviroal* evidence for this. Back in the 80s the lab got the first species to breed in captivity and I had gotten the impression that the conclusion came from this one species that Jud Crawford coaxed and I kept feeding. I learned from the same lab tech there, now two decades later, that they have never got any other fish to breed in captivity to my surprise. Additionally, if it was so important that the waveform signal determines sexual (species) selection, then it seemed to me to be the next step was to see if there was an additional layer of variation *chemically* that might underlay the sex difference PER species difference in signalling. Carl balked at my suggestion to pay close attention to the solutes that make up water conductivity and as far as I know he never proceeded to investigate the carriers of the signal information (in the water) for biological activity.
I am having some problems downloading the pdfs@
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but I do not see how they can conclude from same DNA - different waveforms, that this difference does not simply reflect ecological differences.
The one thing that Jud and I learned about e-fish reproductive behavior in the field (in Africa) was that the adults swam UNDER the forest floor to spawn in and around tree trunks BELOW the floor and that the young susequently returned to the lake to mature. So when determining where the possible boundaries of allopatry and sympatry are in these fish, the differences can be as diverse as the central forest rather than the lake proper. I noticed that an allopatric possibility remained through categorization of the adult habitats with minor scale color variations but when it came to species identification Carl destroyed this recorded information when he sent the specimens to Paris.
Subsquently, the lab took up the DNA work but I doubt the analysis would be as fine as the combined morphological and geographic approach I undertook for the family. The claim is probably more bluster than content. If they have behavioral evidence to indicate that the electric differences are not reflections of the larger diversity of equatorial life than temperate areas but ARE due to behaviorally influenced sexual selection and community effects then I might change my mind. My sense is that reading the PDFS can not change this opinion.
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