Meeting Abstract
Social animals must assess the environment to make behavioral decisions. Across vertebrates, processing of social cues to elicit suitable behavioral responses is thought to be mediated by conserved brain nuclei of the social decision-making network (SDMN). In several fish species, chemosensory signaling is crucial for social communication, and female-released compounds can elicit physiological and behavioral responses in male receivers. Here we tested the hypothesis that gravid (reproductively-receptive) females of the highly social African cichlid, Astatotilapia burtoni, actively alter their urination rate and behavior in a context-dependent manner, and then examined neural activation patterns in nuclei of the SDMN in different social contexts. Using an innocuous dye to visualize urine pulses, we exposed dye-injected gravid females to four conditions: dominant male, gravid female, brooding (non-receptive) female, and no fish control, and then quantified urination and social behaviors. We found that gravid females do alter urination rates in a context-dependent manner, and that aggressive behaviors differ in the presence of females of different reproductive states. These results suggest that A. burtoni females have a similar chemosensory signaling mechanism to that of males, conveying reproductive status or body condition to males and to other females. Using the immediate early gene cfos as a proxy for neural activity, we also found that gravid females showed context-dependent activation patterns within specific nuclei of the SDMN that reflect reproductive and aggressive situations. These results reveal the neural substrates that process intra- and inter-sexual social behaviors in a single fish species and provide insights on how the female brain mediates adaptive decisions in varying contexts.
