URBAN, Lenka; MOORE, Paul A; J.P. Scott Center for Neuroscience, Mind and Behavior, Department of Biological Sciences, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, 43403; J.P. Scott Center for Neuroscience, Mind and Behavior, Department of Biological Sciences, Bowling Green State University, Ohio, 43403: Aversive Conditioning and Pattern Recognition in the Crayfish Orconectes Rusticus: Does Aversive Conditioning Affect Fighting Behavior?

During agonistic confrontations between crayfish of varying sizes, larger crayfish win more fights and take on the role of a dominant. During these confrontations, crayfish use both visual and tactile sensory information to make decisions about retreat or escalation. The visual system of crayfish has been largely regarded as a photo-sensitive organ, but few studies have shown the ability of the visual system to discriminate between varying amounts of light. In this study, we examined whether aversive conditioning associated with visual patterns in the surrounding environment would negatively affect the outcome of confrontations with smaller individuals. Crayfish were placed into a four chambered fight tank where two areas were black, and two were checker patterned. When crayfish entered the patterned area, a shadow resembling a predatory fish (unconditional stimulus) was introduced, causing reduced locomotory behavior. Controls underwent the same treatment minus the predator shadow when in the patterned area. Over several trials of conditioning, the crayfish displayed aversive conditioning to the patterned areas. Subsequently, this had an affect on the agonistic interactions of the conditioned crayfish with smaller individuals. Our results show that crayfish visual systems may be aversively conditioned to their environments, and this conditioning has an overall negative effect on the outcome of agonistic confrontations.