Meeting Abstract
Across vertebrates females are often senders of potent chemical signals that provide information important for coordinating reproductive events. In several fish species, these chemical signals can induce robust reproductive behavioral responses in male receivers. How the brain processes these sexually-relevant signals to elicit this behavior, however, remains poorly understood in fishes. Here, we used the highly social African cichlid, Astatotilapia burtoni, to investigate how sexually-relevant chemical and visual signals from gravid (reproductively-receptive) females influence behavior and brain activation patterns in dominant males. We presented chemical signals alone (control water or gravid female-conditioned water) and paired with matching visual signals (no fish control or gravid female) and found that A. burtoni males need sexually-relevant visual signals to engage in reproductive behaviors, and the number of reproductive behaviors increased when exposed to visual and chemical cues together. When female-conditioned water was delivered alone, males exhibited increased swimming and overall activity compared to when presented with control water. Using the immediate early gene cfos as a proxy for neural activation, we found that brain regions of the social decision making network show differential activation in fish exposed to chemical and visual cues together compared to chemical cues alone. These data provide insight on potential distinctions between brain regions and cell populations involved in olfactory processing itself from those involved in integrating different sensory modalities to elicit appropriate social behavior.
