Meeting Abstract
Astatotilapia burtoni, an African Rift Lake cichlid, are a model organism for understanding social behavior in the lab. Much work has been done in the past on examining the role of male-male dominance interactions, and how other males use observations of these fights to determine social standing through transitive inference. It has been hypothesized that female A. burtoni also observe male dominance interactions, so as to decide which male to spawn with. We investigated whether female A. burtoni were observing male fights, and changing their patterns of association based on the outcome of the dominance interaction. Females were allowed to choose between two size-matched males before the fight, observed the two males fight, and were allowed to choose between the males again after the fight. With preliminary results, the visual components of the male fight appear to influence female choice, but do not fully explain female mate choice in A. burtoni. This suggests that more work may need to be done on exploring non-visual sensory systems in A. burtoni, and how those systems contribute to female mate choice.
