La Loggia, Océane; Wilson, Alastair J; Taborsky, Barbara (2024). Early social complexity influences social behaviour but not social trajectories in a cooperatively breeding cichlid fish. Royal Society Open Science, 11(3) The Royal Society Publishing 10.1098/rsos.230740
|
Text
la-loggia-et-al-2024-early-social-complexity-influences-social-behaviour-but-not-social-trajectories-in-a-cooperatively.pdf - Published Version Available under License Creative Commons: Attribution (CC-BY). Download (1MB) | Preview |
Social competence-defined as the ability to optimize social behaviour according to available social information-can be influenced by the social environment experienced in early life. In cooperatively breeding vertebrates, the current group size influences behavioural phenotypes, but it is not known whether the group size experienced in early life influences behavioural phenotypes generally or social competence specifically. We tested whether being reared in large versus small groups for the first two months of life affects social behaviours, and associated life-history traits, in the cooperatively breeding cichlid Neolamprologus pulcher between the ages of four and twelve months. As we predicted, fish raised in larger and more complex groups showed higher social competence later in life. This was shown in several ways: they exhibited more, and earlier, submissive behaviour in response to aggression from a dominant conspecific, and-in comparison to fish raised in small groups-they exhibited more flexibility in the expression of submissive behaviour. By contrast, there was no evidence that early social complexity, as captured by the group size, affects aggression or exploration behaviour nor did it influence the propensity to disperse or show helping behaviour. Our results emphasize the importance of early-life social complexity for the development of social competence.
Item Type: |
Journal Article (Original Article) |
|---|---|
Division/Institute: |
08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Ecology and Evolution (IEE) 08 Faculty of Science > Department of Biology > Institute of Ecology and Evolution (IEE) > Behavioural Ecology |
UniBE Contributor: |
La Loggia, Océane, Taborsky, Barbara |
Subjects: |
500 Science > 570 Life sciences; biology 500 Science > 590 Animals (Zoology) 000 Computer science, knowledge & systems |
ISSN: |
2054-5703 |
Publisher: |
The Royal Society Publishing |
Language: |
English |
Submitter: |
Pubmed Import |
Date Deposited: |
04 Apr 2024 16:07 |
Last Modified: |
05 Apr 2024 07:02 |
Publisher DOI: |
10.1098/rsos.230740 |
PubMed ID: |
38571911 |
Uncontrolled Keywords: |
cichlids developmental plasticity early-life effects life-history traits social behaviour |
BORIS DOI: |
10.48350/195667 |
URI: |
https://boris.unibe.ch/id/eprint/195667 |
Actions (login required)
 |
Edit item |