Meeting Abstract
Parental care represents a suite of distinct behaviors performed by parents to maximize fitness. Dynamic shifts in parental care strategies, such as between nest defense and direct provisioning of the offspring, are required in response to environmental variation. However, the neural mechanisms that mediate strategic parental decisions remain unknown. The anemonefish, Amphiprion ocellaris represents a burgeoning model in social neuroscience which is conducive to manipulating the environment while simultaneously measuring nest defense and direct egg provisioning. The goal of this study was to determine the extent to which arginine vasotocin (AVT) and isotocin (IT) signaling mediate decisions in parental care strategy. Specifically, we tested the hypotheses that AVT signaling is critical for aggressive egg defense and that IT signaling is critical for direct egg attendance. Blockade of IT, using an IT receptor antagonist, significantly reduced direct egg attendance, and increased levels of aggressive egg defense. Conversely, blockade of AVT reduced aggression and tended to increase egg care. Results demonstrate that male anemonefish alter their parental strategy with increased predation risk, and that IT and AVT signaling pathways are important neural substrates underlying decisional trade-offs, weighing heightened aggression against reduced egg attendance.
