The effect of hypoxia and turbidity on male courtship behavior


SOCIETY FOR INTEGRATIVE AND COMPARATIVE BIOLOGY
2021 VIRTUAL ANNUAL MEETING (VAM)
January 3 – Febuary 28, 2021

Meeting Abstract


BSP-1-2  Sun Jan 3 14:15 – 14:30  The effect of hypoxia and turbidity on male courtship behavior Williams, BL*; Gray, SM; Pintor, LM; The Ohio State University; The Ohio State University; The Ohio State University williams.4234@osu.edu

Mate choice is crucial to reproductive success because potential mates vary widely in the quality of resources or genetic material provided to their offspring. Hypoxia (low oxygen) and turbidity (suspended particulate matter) are two environmental conditions that can strongly affect reproductive behavior because hypoxia favors the reduction of energetically costly activities and turbidity disrupts visual communication. Pseudocrenilabrus multicolor, an African cichlid, is highly abundant in both swamps and rivers, but these two environments pose two very different contexts in which to assess potential mates, so studying their reproductive behavior can provide insights into how plastic changes in behavior can facilitate persistence in environments impacted by humans. To determine whether rearing treatment (high/low DO, high/low turbidity) affects courtship behavior, we conducted mate choice trials (n=80) where we measured the time spent (s) by males in courtship behaviors. Preliminary results (n=39 trials; Two-way ANOVAs and Tukey’s tests) indicate that population did not affect the time spent in male courtship behaviors, but rearing treatment does impact the time spent by males in lateral displays (F3,73 =3.526, p=0.019) and charging (F3,73=11.214, p < 0.001), but not quivers which were rarely observed (F3,74=1.595, p=0.198). Unexpectedly, hypoxic males spent more time charging than normoxic males and males from the hypoxic-clear treatment spent more time displaying than males from the other three treatments. Because changes in reproductive behaviors can lead to changes at the population or community level, further study on the effect of these challenging environments on reproductive behavior is warranted.

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