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Authors
Advisor(s)
Abstract(s)
Animals communicate through the exchange of signals. However, third-party individuals can detect and
intercept signals not directly sent to them, a phenomenon known as eavesdropping, and the presence of
bystanders can influence the signalling behaviour of interacting conspecifics, a phenomenon named the
audience effect. So far, research done on audience effects and eavesdropping has been mainly focused on
their function, rather than on their proximate mechanisms. For this reason, we were interested in testing
the occurrence of audience effects on male zebrafish, a genetically tractable model organism that is
emerging as a major candidate for the study of the neural basis of social behaviour. Here, pairs of males
were exposed to a mixed-sex shoal, which was used as an audience, at two different times: (1) during a
contest between them, to test for an audience effect and (2) before the contest, to test whether this prior
exposure influences subsequent agonistic behaviour (i.e. aggressive priming). We analysed the pairs'
aggressive signalling during the contest by measuring variables that characterize both the individuals'
behaviour and the interaction, and found that pre-exposure to an audience induced a shorter latency to
display, an increase in the time dominants spent chasing subordinates and a shorter time to resolve the
agonistic interaction. Also, exposure to the audience during the interaction led to a higher number of
interactions in which displays occurred, a higher number of resolved interactions with displays and a
decrease in the escalation of aggression for resolved interactions. These results add zebrafish to the
literature on the audience effect and, most importantly, open the way for the study of the neural
mechanisms involved in the processing of social information in a model organism.
Description
Keywords
Aggressive priming Audience effects Communication networks Danio rerio Social information Zebrafish
Citation
Animal Behaviour, 107, 269-276. doi: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2015.07.007
Publisher
Elsevier