Social recognition in wild fish populations

The ability of animals to gather information about their social and physical environment is essential for their ecological function. Odour cues are an important component of this information gathering across taxa. Recent laboratory studies have revealed the importance of flexible chemical cues in fa...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Proceedings of the Royal Society. B, Biological sciences Biological sciences, 2007-04, Vol.274 (1613), p.1071-1077
Main Authors: Ward, Ashley J.W, Webster, Michael M, Hart, Paul J.B
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animals
Behavior, Animal
Brackish
Chemicals
Cues
Diet
Environment
Estuaries
Experimentation
Fish
Freshwater
Freshwater fishes
Gasterosteus aculeatus
Habitat preferences
Insect behavior
Marine
Odorants
Odors
Odour
Olfactory
Schooling
Shoals
Smegmamorpha - physiology
Social Behavior
Social Organization
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Summary:The ability of animals to gather information about their social and physical environment is essential for their ecological function. Odour cues are an important component of this information gathering across taxa. Recent laboratory studies have revealed the importance of flexible chemical cues in facilitating social recognition of fishes. These cues are known to be mediated by recent habitat experience and fishes are attracted to individuals that smell like themselves. However, to be relevant to wild populations, where animals may move and forage freely, these cues would have to be temporally flexible and allow spatial resolution. Here, we present data from a study of social recognition in wild populations of three-spined sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus). Focal fish preferentially associated with conspecifics from the same habitat as themselves. These preferences were changed and updated following translocation of the focal fish to a different site. Further investigation revealed that association preferences changed after 3 h of exposure to different habitat cues. In addition to temporal flexibility, the cues also allowed a high degree of spatial resolution: fish taken from sites 200 m apart produced cues that were sufficiently different to enable the focal fish to discriminate and associate with fish captured near their own home site. The adaptive benefits of this social recognition mechanism remain unclear, though they may allow fish to orient within their social environment and gain current local information.
ISSN:0962-8452
1471-2954
DOI:10.1098/rspb.2006.0231