Meeting Abstract
Animal behavior varies based on immediate social context and cues from social partners, yet the specific patterns of behavioral plasticity may depend on abiotic environmental features or evolutionary history. Populations of Poecilia reticulata (Trinidadian guppies) that evolved in high and low predation environments vary in morphology, physiology, and behavioral strategies. Male guppies perform conspicuous displays known as sigmoids, which play an important role in successful courtship but also increase risk of predation. We asked how high predation and low predation populations differ in behavioral strategies to balance this tradeoff between predation risk and competition for mates. We assayed behavior of lab-reared males derived from high or low predation populations in one of five social contexts: focal male presented with two females, two females and alarm cue, one male and one female, two males, or alone. Acute stressors altered courtship behavior in opposite directions depending on ancestral population: when exposed to alarm cue, males from the low predator site increased sigmoids, while males from the high predator site decreased their sigmoid behaviors relative to trials without alarm cues. Males from the high predator population also decreased their sigmoid behaviors in response to a competitor. We are linking variation in courtship strategies to context-dependent distribution of neural activity marker pS6 throughout the brain. In total, we demonstrated different strategies of balancing the tradeoff between mating and predation in courtship depending on ancestral predation levels. Environmental shifts of these tradeoffs may have affected the evolution of the neural mechanisms underlying the sensitivity of behaviors to context.
