Adaptation and Natural Selection

Lateral Line

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It is sometimes hard to figure out what an organ is for. And researchers have to work hard to identify its adaptive function.

The lateral line is a good illustration. This organ is a conspicuous morphological feature of the great majority of fishes. ... Eventually, painstaking morphological and physiological studies by many workers demonstrated that the lateral line is a sense organ related in basic mechanism to audition (pp. 10-11).

Here is a picture of a cod with a clear example of the lateral line (picture from Life Nature Library, Fish).

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