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Neural correlates of winning and losing fights in poison frog tadpoles

View ORCID ProfileEva K Fischer, Harmony Alvarez, Katherine M Lagerstrom, Randi Petrillo, Gwen Ellis, View ORCID ProfileLauren A O’Connell
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.27.922286
Eva K Fischer
Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
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Harmony Alvarez
Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
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Katherine M Lagerstrom
Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
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Randi Petrillo
Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School, Cambridge, MA, USA
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Gwen Ellis
Masconomet Regional High School, Boxford, MA, USA
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Lauren A O’Connell
Department of Biology, Stanford University, Stanford, California, USA
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  • For correspondence: loconnel@stanford.edu
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ABSTRACT

Aggressive competition for resources among juveniles is documented in many species, but the neural mechanisms regulating this behavior in young animals are poorly understood. In poison frogs, increased parental care is associated with decreased water volume of tadpole pools, resource limitation, and aggression. Indeed, the tadpoles of many poison frog species will attack, kill, and cannibalize other tadpoles. We examined the neural basis of conspecific aggression in Dendrobates tinctorius poison frog tadpoles by comparing individuals that won aggressive encounters, lost aggressive encounters, or did not engage in a fight. We compared patterns of generalized neural activity as well as activity specifically in nonapeptide (arginine vasotocin and mesotocin) and dopaminergic cells. We found increased neural activity in the medial pallium and preoptic area of losers, but increased neural activity specifically in the preoptic area nonapeptide neurons of winners. We found no differences in activity of dopaminergic cells among behavioral groups. This study is the first to examine the neural mechanisms of aggression in amphibian larvae. Our findings suggest the neural correlates of aggression in poison frog tadpoles are similar to neural mechanisms mediating aggression in adults and juveniles of other vertebrate taxa.

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The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
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Posted January 28, 2020.
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Neural correlates of winning and losing fights in poison frog tadpoles
Eva K Fischer, Harmony Alvarez, Katherine M Lagerstrom, Randi Petrillo, Gwen Ellis, Lauren A O’Connell
bioRxiv 2020.01.27.922286; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.27.922286
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Neural correlates of winning and losing fights in poison frog tadpoles
Eva K Fischer, Harmony Alvarez, Katherine M Lagerstrom, Randi Petrillo, Gwen Ellis, Lauren A O’Connell
bioRxiv 2020.01.27.922286; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.01.27.922286

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