The Effect of the Sex of an Audience on Male-Male Displays of Siamese Fighting Fish (Betta Splendens)

Abstract

Communication in the natural environment often involves more than a simple sender-receiver dyad because signals may be detected by more than one individual (i.e. communication occurs in networks). The presence of individuals other than those involved in the signalling interaction has been shown to change signallers' behaviour. Previous experiments have shown that intra-sexual communication of male fighting fish (Betta splendens) is affected by the presence of a female but not by a male conspecific. However the experimental design did not allow the effect of the sex of the audience to be compared. We used an experimental design that allowed direct investigation of the effect of the sex of an audience on male-male fighting fish interactions. Our results show that the sex of a conspecific audience influences male-male aggressive displays. When a male audience was present subjects attempted significantly more bites and spent less time near the opponent than with a female audience. The results of this experiment support the view that the presence and sex of an audience is important in determining how individuals should display during an interaction.

Learning and Mate Choice

“…Conversely, whether a male audience was previously present or not did not significantly change the characteristics of the male-male interaction. A similar result was found by Matos & McGregor (2002) in the same species. When a male audience was present prior to encounter, males attempted significantly more bites and spent less time near the opponent than when a female audience was observed prior to the encounter.…”

Stimulus frequency differentially affects chirping in two species of weakly electric fish: implications for the evolution of signal structure and function

“…If rises do indicate dominance, this hypothesis would predict that rises would be produced more often by winners of physical agonistic encounters, rather than by losers. It might also predict that rises would be produced more often when two sparring individuals are in the presence of an audience of conspecifics similar to dominance signals produced in other fish species (Doutrelant et al, 2001;Matos and McGregor, 2002). Although our finding that rises are produced when the stimulus is removed is consistent with this hypothesis, further work is needed to assess the adaptive value of signaling dominance upon the retreat of a rival.…”

Evidence for an audience effect in mice: male social partners alter the male vocal response to female cues

“…Although audience effects have been shown in other animals (Matos and McGregor, 2002;Ryan, 1985;Vignal et al, 2004), there have been few studies on this effect in rodents (Blanchard et al, 1991;Wöhr and Schwarting, 2008), limiting our ability to assess the genetic and neural underpinnings of this phenomenon. Our findings show that a male audience modifies male vocal responses to female odor, thus demonstrating an audience effect in mice.…”