The ability to generate and detect electric fields is vital for the survival of several groups of fishes. Authors Ahmed A. Elbassiouny, Nathan R. Lovejoy and Belinda S.W. Chang speculated that electric fish may be able to meet the high metabolic demands of bioelectrogenesis, as a result of the adaptive evolution of genes encoding for the mitochondrial OXPHOS cellular machinery. Evidence for this was found in two independently derived clades of weakly electric fishes, South American Gymnotiformes and African Mormyroidea.
