Meeting Abstract
The mechanosensory lateral line system of fishes is essential for sensing nearby water movements, and functions in schooling, orienting in currents, locating prey, and detecting and evading predators. However, less is known about its role in social interactions. Previous work in our lab demonstrated that the cichlid Astatotilapia burtoni uses mechanosensory information detected by the lateral line system to mediate male-male territorial interactions. Many fishes also produce water movements during courtship and reproductive interactions, but we know little about the role of the lateral line system in reproduction in any of the ~30,000 species of fishes. To examine the role of mechanoreception in reproduction, we compared behavioral interactions and neural activation patterns associated with courtship in lateral line-intact and -ablated females. We quantified reproductive behaviors of both sexes: female response to male courtship, average proximity of the fish pair, and spawning rates. Preliminary data suggests that the lateral line affects reproductive behavior in both sexes, such that males perform fewer courtship behaviors towards ablated females than towards intact females, and ablated females have an altered response to male courtship attempts. To investigate neural processing of reproductively-relevant lateral line information, brains were collected after behavior trials and stained for the immediate early gene cfos as a proxy for neural activation. We are comparing neural activation patterns in sensory and socially-relevant brain regions in lateral line-intact and ablated groups. This study is the first to integrate behavioral and neural activation analyses to show the importance of the lateral line system in mediating reproductive communication in any fish species.
