Submission Type
Poster
Abstract
A key component of sociality is the ability of individuals to collect relevant social information about groupmates. Human-induced rapid environmental change (HIREC) can interfere with the collection of accurate social information by altering organisms’ sensory environment. In aquatic ecosystems anthropogenic disturbances can often cause an increase in water turbidity, thereby altering the visual environment of a body of water. This change to the sensory environment can degrade or obscure visual information used by individuals to mediate social behavior and recognize conspecifics. Neolamprologus pulcher is a cooperatively breeding cichlid that lives in small groups and utilize a variety of visual cues and signals to mediate social behavior. To understand how changes in water turbidity impact conspecific recognition in a social species I measured the habituation rate of N. pulcher individuals to a novel conspecific stimulus at high and low levels of water turbidity. Preliminary work shows that N. pulcher do habituate to video playback of conspecifics under typical water conditions. Additionally, I assessed the ability of N. pulcher individuals to discriminate between conspecifics at increased levels of turbidity by measuring individual’s reactivity to familiar and unfamiliar conspecific stimuli in high and low levels of water turbidity. The results of this work are pending, but the outcomes will examine a potential proximal cause for changes in social behavior that occur in response to HIREC.
Included in
Recognition of Conspecifics under Elevated Turbidity
A key component of sociality is the ability of individuals to collect relevant social information about groupmates. Human-induced rapid environmental change (HIREC) can interfere with the collection of accurate social information by altering organisms’ sensory environment. In aquatic ecosystems anthropogenic disturbances can often cause an increase in water turbidity, thereby altering the visual environment of a body of water. This change to the sensory environment can degrade or obscure visual information used by individuals to mediate social behavior and recognize conspecifics. Neolamprologus pulcher is a cooperatively breeding cichlid that lives in small groups and utilize a variety of visual cues and signals to mediate social behavior. To understand how changes in water turbidity impact conspecific recognition in a social species I measured the habituation rate of N. pulcher individuals to a novel conspecific stimulus at high and low levels of water turbidity. Preliminary work shows that N. pulcher do habituate to video playback of conspecifics under typical water conditions. Additionally, I assessed the ability of N. pulcher individuals to discriminate between conspecifics at increased levels of turbidity by measuring individual’s reactivity to familiar and unfamiliar conspecific stimuli in high and low levels of water turbidity. The results of this work are pending, but the outcomes will examine a potential proximal cause for changes in social behavior that occur in response to HIREC.
Comments
Ian M. Hamilton, The Ohio State University