ArticleScientific reports2016
Tetrapod-like pelvic girdle in a walking cavefish.
Article in Scientific reports, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 56 citations in OpenAlex.
- Fish climbing in the upper Congo Basin (Central Africa), first report for the shellear Parakneria thysi on the Luvilombo Falls.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- From Fin to Limb: Orientational Shift and Evolution of Diagonal-Couplet Gait in Tetrapods.Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2026Review
- Evolutionary pathway and genetic mechanisms of fin-to-limb transition in vertebrates.Frontiers in cell and developmental biology · 2026Review
- Traces of dipnoan fish document the earliest adaptations of vertebrates to move on land.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Ground Reaction Forces and Energy Exchange During Underwater Walking.Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2024Article
- Adhesion Behavior in Fish: From Structures to Applications.Biomimetics (Basel, Switzerland) · 2023Review
- A landmark-free analysis of the pelvic girdle in Sulawesi ricefishes (Adrianichthyidae): How 2D and 3D geometric morphometrics can complement each other in the analysis of a complex structure.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Sucker Shapes, Skeletons, and Bioinspiration: How Hard and Soft Tissue Morphology Generates Adhesive Performance in Waterfall Climbing Goby Fishes.Integrative and comparative biology · 2022Article
- Evolutionary history of quadrupedal walking gaits shows mammalian release from locomotor constraint.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Models of benthic bipedalism.Journal of the Royal Society, Interface · 2021Article
- Ontogenetic shape changes in the pelvis of the Greater Rhea (Aves, Palaeognathae) and their relationships with cursorial locomotion: a geometric morphometric approach.Journal of anatomy · 2020Article
- An adhesive locomotion model for the rock-climbing fish, Beaufortia kweichowensis.Scientific reports · 2019Article
- Emersion and Terrestrial Locomotion of the Northern Snakehead (Integrative organismal biology (Oxford, England) · 2019Article
- Extra-Visual Systems in the Spatial Reorientation of Cavefish.Scientific reports · 2018Article
- Article
- Musculoskeletal anatomy of the pelvic fin of Polypterus: implications for phylogenetic distribution and homology of pre- and postaxial pelvic appendicular muscles.Journal of anatomy · 2017Article
- Trackways Produced by Lungfish During Terrestrial Locomotion.Scientific reports · 2016Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Fishes have adapted a number of different behaviors to move out of the water, but none have been described as being able to walk on land with a tetrapod-like gait. Here we show that the blind cavefish Cryptotora thamicola walks and climbs waterfalls with a salamander-like diagonal-couplets lateral sequence gait and has evolved a robust pelvic girdle that shares morphological features associated with terrestrial vertebrates. In all other fishes, the pelvic bones are suspended in a muscular sling or loosely attached to the pectoral girdle anteriorly. In contrast, the pelvic girdle of Cryptotora is a large, broad puboischiadic plate that is joined to the iliac process of a hypertrophied sacral rib; fusion of these bones in tetrapods creates an acetabulum. The vertebral column in the sacral area has large anterior and posterior zygapophyses, transverse processes, and broad neural spines, all of which are associated with terrestrial organisms. The diagonal-couplet lateral sequence gait was accomplished by rotation of the pectoral and pelvic girdles creating a standing wave of the axial body. These findings are significant because they represent the first example of behavioural and morphological adaptation in an extant fish that converges on the tetrapodal walking behaviour and morphology.
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