Meeting Abstract
Males of many species possess bright colors and armaments, which are thought to function primarily in displaying male quality to prospective mates. Convict cichlid fish (Amatitlania siquia), however, exhibit reversed sexual dichromatism; only females exhibit a carotenoid-based orange patch located on the ventral surface of the body. The adaptive value of vibrant color in female convict cichlids remains unclear but has been hypothesized to function as a quality indicator to males and other females. High-quality females might threaten the stability of pairbonds thus we hypothesized that cichlids of both sexes would be more aggressive towards females possessing larger orange patches. To determine whether orange patch size affects cichlid behavior, we exposed males and females of a range of body sizes and color phenotypes (females only) to one of three treatments: a cichlid model with no patch, a small patch, or a large patch. We recorded interactions digitally and quantified all aggressive behavior towards the models. Our analyses revealed no significant sex or treatment differences in the levels of aggression directed towards models. However, both sexes show a moderate increase in aggression towards models with small patches, but not large patches, relative to models without patches. Patch asymmetry (females), absolute body size, and relative body size did not explain variation in aggression towards models for either sex. Data collected in the field using a similar paradigm showed that pairbonded convict cichlids increase aggression towards models with orange patches when defending young. These data suggest that female color elicits aggression in a context-dependent manner, primarily in mated animals that might benefit from deterring intruders that threaten to disrupt the pairbond during joint offspring care.
