Discrimination of mates and intruders: visual and olfactory cues for a monogamous territorial coral reef butterflyfish
Section snippets
Experimental Pairs and Nonmate Fish
Mate recognition experiments were conducted by scuba divers on adult pebbled butterflyfish (standard length, SL, ≥72 mm) that occur in pairs on shallow reefs along the northwest shore of the island of Hawaii. Experimental fish pairs were confirmed by direct observations for 10–15 min of pair swimming/following behaviour, feeding and common defence of territorial borders (Tricas, 1989a, Tricas, 1989b). One member of the resident pair (the mate stimulus) was randomly selected, captured by hand net
Results
Resident fish were highly motivated to approach and interact with the visual stimulus produced by the model bottle fish in all experiments (see Supplementary Video). Once resident fish entered a square within the experimental arena, the percentage of time spent near at least one stimulus bottle was very high for at least the first phase of the experiment (between 23% and nearly 100%, median of all 32 experimental trials 81%). Fish were typically observed in close proximity to each of the
Discussion
The results of this study are consistent with the hypothesis that monogamous butterflyfish discriminate between their mate and a nonmate by both visual and olfactory cues. Our results further indicate that multiple stimuli may be necessary for butterflyfish to discriminate between mates and potential competitors that attempt to forage within their feeding territories. When visual and olfactory stimuli were both present, resident fish spent more time with the unfamiliar fish and engaged in
Acknowledgments
This work was partially funded by a University of Hawai'i Ecology, Evolution, and Conservation Biology Research Grant to K.S.B., a NOAA-Hawai'i Undersea Research Laboratory grant NA050AR4301108 to T.C.T. and an NSF grant IBN 0137883 to T.C.T. We thank T. Erin Cox and Nick Whitney for field assistance and Katherine Howard for logistical support. Brian W. Bowen and Kathleen S. Cole provided valuable comments on the study design and manuscript. This is contribution number 1583 from Hawaii
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