The virtual lover: variable and easily guided 3D fish animations as an innovative tool in mate-choice experiments with sailfin mollies-II. Validation

Abstract

The use of computer animation in behavioral research is a state-of-the-art method for designing and presenting animated animals to live test animals. The major advantages of computer animations are: (1) the creation of animated animal stimuli with high variability of morphology and even behavior; (2) animated stimuli provide highly standardized, controlled and repeatable testing procedures; and (3) they allow a reduction in the number of live test animals regarding the 3Rs principle. But the use of animated animals should be attended by a thorough validation for each test species to verify that behavior measured with live animals toward virtual animals can also be expected with natural stimuli. Here we present results on the validation of a custom-made simulation for animated 3D sailfin mollies Poecilia latipinna and show that responses of live test females were as strong to an animated fish as to a video or a live male fish. Movement of an animated stimulus was important but female response was stronger toward a swimming 3D fish stimulus than to a “swimming” box. Moreover, male test fish were able to discriminate between animated male and female stimuli; hence, rendering the animated 3D fish a useful tool in mate-choice experiments with sailfin mollies.

Validation of 2D‐animated pictures as an investigative tool in the behavioural sciences: A case study with a West African cichlid fish,Pelvicachromis pulcher

“…In line with the ‘3R framework’ (replacement, reduction, refinement) of research animal use proposed by Russell and Burch (), virtual stimuli can contribute to animal welfare and have the potential to enhance experimental manipulations. For example, replacing live stimuli with virtual analogues reduces the number of animals needed for experiments and technological progress makes invasive techniques like the surgical manipulation of morphological traits redundant (Gierszewski et al., ; Woo & Rieucau, ). Modern methods enable selective manipulations of single traits in morphology, colouration or behaviour (reviewed in Rosenthal, , ; Stevens, Parraga, Cuthill, Partridge, & Troscianko, ) and therefore allow for a decoupled testing of correlated traits, thereby facilitating the testing of causality (Veen et al., ).…”

“…Despite their limitations, virtual stimuli have been proven to be a valuable instrument in the behavioural sciences and have been successfully applied in numerous studies (Clark & Stephenson, 1999;Gierszewski et al, 2016;Qin, Wong, Seguin, & Gerlai, 2014). Yet, there are studies in which test subjects did not respond to video stimuli (Gonçalves, Oliveira, Körner, Poschadel, & Schlupp, 2000;Patterson-Kane, Nicol, Foster, & Temple, 1997).…”

Using the <em>FishSim</em> Animation Toolchain to Investigate Fish Behavior: A Case Study on Mate-Choice Copying In Sailfin Mollies

“…The most important parameter measured in an MCC experiment is the focal female's association time for each male (protocol step 6.1). Association time is an indirect measure of female mate preference in fish 63,64,65,66 and a well-established measure to determine mate choice in sailfin mollies when no direct contact is provided 12,48,61,67,68 . For each treatment and the control, we first used association time to analyze whether the choosing motivation differed between mate-choice tests.…”

“…We used FishSim to perform an MCC experiment by presenting virtual stimulus males and virtual model females on computer monitors instead of using live stimulus and model fish as used in the classic experimental procedure 49,50,51,61 . The general usability of our software has previously been validated for testing hypotheses about mate choice in sailfin mollies 12 . Here, we tested whether the absence or presence of a gravid spot in virtual model females affects the mate choice of observing live focal females.…”

Guppies prefer to follow large (robot) leaders irrespective of own size

“…Body size is often inevitably linked to specific behavioral patterns [15] and it is thus experimentally difficult to disentangle what cue (body size or linked behavior) is used by individuals that have to choose among differently-sized conspecifics. While researchers from the field of sexual selection make use of video animations in binary choice tests to decouple behavior from body size and keep either one constant while varying the other (see [21–24]), the study of collective movement has largely relied on the use of live stimuli (but see [25] for a working Virtual Reality set-up). We addressed this issue by using a biomimetic robot that is accepted by live fish as a conspecific and provided the same behavioral cues while varying only body size.…”