social context influences aggressive and courtship behavior in a cichlid fish社会环境影响积极和鲷鱼的求偶行为.pdfVIP

Social Context Influences Aggressive and Courtship Behavior in a Cichlid Fish 1 2 1 Julie K. Desjardins *, Hans A. Hofmann , Russell D. Fernald 1 Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, United States of America, 2 Section of Integrative Biology, Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology, Institute for Neuroscience, The University of Texas at Austin, Austin, Texas, United States of America Abstract Social interactions require knowledge of the environment and status of others, which can be acquired indirectly by observing the behavior of others. When being observed, animals can also alter their signals based on who is watching. Here we observed how male cichlid fish (Astatotilapia burtoni) behave when being watched in two different contexts. In the first, we show that aggressive and courtship behaviors displayed by subordinate males depends critically on whether dominant males can see them, and in the second, we manipulated who was watching aggressive interactions and showed that dominant males will change their behavior depending on audience composition. In both cases, when a more dominant individual is out of view and the audience consists of more subordinate individuals, those males signal key social information to females by displaying courtship and dominant behaviors. In contrast, when a dominant male is present, males cease both aggression and courtship. These data suggest that males are keenly aware of their social environment and modulate their aggressive and courtship behaviors strategically for reproductive and social advantage. Citation: Desjardins JK, Hofmann HA, Fernald RD (2012) Social Context Influences Aggressive and Courtship Behavior in a Cichlid Fish. PLoS ON