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Microhabitat predicts species differences in exploratory behavior in Lake Malawi cichlids

Zachary V. Johnson, Emily C. Moore, Ryan Y. Wong, John R. Godwin, Jeffrey T. Streelman, Reade B. Roberts
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/525378
Zachary V. Johnson
1School of Biological Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA
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Emily C. Moore
2Department of Biological Sciences and W. M. Keck Center for Behavioral Biology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA
3Division of Biological Sciences, University of Montana, Missoula, MT, USA
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Ryan Y. Wong
4Department of Biology and Department of Psychology, University of Nebraska Omaha, Omaha, NE, USA
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John R. Godwin
2Department of Biological Sciences and W. M. Keck Center for Behavioral Biology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA
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Jeffrey T. Streelman
1School of Biological Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA
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Reade B. Roberts
2Department of Biological Sciences and W. M. Keck Center for Behavioral Biology, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA
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Abstract

Encountering and adaptively responding to unfamiliar or novel stimuli is a fundamental challenge facing animals and is linked to fitness. Behavioral responses to novel stimuli, or exploratory behavior, can differ strongly between closely related species; however, the ecological and evolutionary factors underlying these differences are not well understood, in part because most comparative investigations have focused on only two species. In this study, we investigate exploratory behavior across 23 species in a previously untested vertebrate system, Lake Malawi cichlid fishes, which comprises hundreds of phenotypically diverse species that have diverged in the past one million years. We investigate behavioral variation across species, across microhabitats, and across environmental contexts. We find strong species differences in behavior that are associated with microhabitat, demonstrate that intermediate microhabitats are associated with higher levels of exploratory behavior, show that patterns of behavioral covariation across contexts are characteristic of modular complex traits, and contrast Malawi cichlid data with behavioral data from selectively bred high-and low-exploratory zebrafish. Taken together, our results tie ecology to species differences in behavior, and highlight Lake Malawi cichlids as a powerful system for understanding the evolution, ecology, and biology of natural behavioral variation.

Highlights

  • Malawi cichlids exhibit high phenotypic variance in exploratory behaviors

  • Species differences in exploratory behavior are explained by microhabitat

  • Rock-dwelling species exhibit strong edge preferences across assays

  • Intermediate habitats are associated with “high exploratory” open field behavior

  • Patterns of behavioral covariance across contexts are modular in Malawi cichlids

Footnotes

  • Declarations of interest: none

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. All rights reserved. No reuse allowed without permission.
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Posted January 22, 2019.
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Microhabitat predicts species differences in exploratory behavior in Lake Malawi cichlids
Zachary V. Johnson, Emily C. Moore, Ryan Y. Wong, John R. Godwin, Jeffrey T. Streelman, Reade B. Roberts
bioRxiv 525378; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/525378
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Microhabitat predicts species differences in exploratory behavior in Lake Malawi cichlids
Zachary V. Johnson, Emily C. Moore, Ryan Y. Wong, John R. Godwin, Jeffrey T. Streelman, Reade B. Roberts
bioRxiv 525378; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/525378

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