Title
The preference for social affiliation renders fish willing to accept lower O-2 levels
Author(s)
Borowiec, B. G.;O'Connor, C. M.;Goodick, K.;Scott, G. R.;Balshine, S.
Published
2018
Publisher
Physiological and Biochemical Zoology
Abstract
Animals are bombarded with information about their environment and must select and interpret the relevant cues to make behavioral adjustments critical to survival. How animals integrate and balance the many signals they receive about their environment is rarely assessed. We investigated how signals from the social and physical environment interact to influence environmental preferences in the endemic Tanganyikan cichlid Neolamprologus pulcher. Specifically, we explored how fish respond to the physiological challenge of declining O-2 levels in light of embedded social preferences using a modified shuttle box apparatus to test O-2 preferences. In the presence of a conspecific, the average (preferred) partial pressure of oxygen (Po-2) and minimum Po-2 experienced were significantly lower (14.90 +/- 2.13 and 12.35 +/- 3.15 kPa, respectively) than in trials without a conspecific (17.18 +/- 2.55 and 15.62 +/- 3.09 kPa, respectively). Fish with conspecifics also spent more time in the low Po-2 zone of the shuttle box and moved between the high and low Po-2 zones less frequently. Hence, O-2 preferences were modified, and fish willingly remained in an area of continuously declining O-2 availability to associate with a conspecific. The O-2 preferences of an individual during social trials correlated with its excess postexercise O-2 consumption following an exhaustive chase but not with its aerobic scope, routine O-2 consumption rate, or body mass. These results suggest that some aspects of respiratory and metabolic physiology (such as the propensity to use anaerobic metabolism) but not others (such as O-2 transport capacity) underpin some variation in social behavior under environmental stress.
Keywords
behavior;preference;shuttle box;oxygen consumption;respirometry;fish;postexercise oxygen-consumption;hypoxia tolerance;neolamprologus-pulcher;rainbow-trout;cichlid fish;fundulus-heteroclitus;metabolic-rate;climate-change;aerobic scope;group-size
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PUB23913