Meeting Abstract
Female Astatotilapia burtoni, a species of mouthbrooding cichlid fish, voluntarily starve themselves for two weeks while their young develop. Little is known about the physiological mechanisms that have evolved to allow them to accomplish this. A. burtoni therefore represent an excellent animal model in which to study the mechanisms that integrate the regulation of feeding and reproduction. Females with broods in their mouths suppress feeding behavior, even if the brood is removed from the buccal cavity. This suppression of appetite, termed brood care motivation (BM), has previously been measured as the reduction in the quantity of food a female will consume. Here we develop an Arduino-based robotic system to automate the quantification of hunger or feeding motivation in A. burtoni using the speed to approach a food-conditioned stimulus. They are conditioned to approach the feeder sensor through the gate sensors upon stimulus of a signaling light, they then subsequently trigger the feeder sensor to release food when they are sufficiently close. Once the fishes are conditioned and brooding, they are tested with a program that doesn’t dispense food. This eliminates the consummatory act of feeding in the process of quantifying brood care motivation and will allow us to investigate the underlying neural and physiological mechanisms. Arduino systems are routinely used in robotics education at a high school level and lower, so these experiments offer the opportunity for outreach and collaboration.
