Presence of an audience and consistent interindividual differences affect archerfish shooting behaviour
Section snippets
Subjects and Animal Husbandry
Eight archerfish of unknown sex (archerfish are monomorphic) and age (the archerfish were wild caught) participated in this experiment. At the time of the experiment, the fish were estimated to be 8–16 months old and were 8–10 cm long. They were sourced from an accredited ornamental fish retailer. The fish were housed in the St Andrews fish laboratory as a single group in a glass tank (180 × 45 cm and 35 cm deep) and under a 12:12 h light:dark cycle, with water temperatures between 24.5 and 25 °C.
Training
All fish achieved both training criteria but required a lot of time to reach them. The number of trials required to achieve criterion differed markedly across fish (Appendix Table A1). There appeared to be a positive relationship between time to criterion and latency to shoot in baseline settings, and this may relate to a general sensitivity to risk but we did not formally quantify this given the small number of fish (Appendix Table A1).
Latency to Shoot
Focal fish took longer to shoot when exposed to a visible
Discussion
Archerfish increased their latency to shoot a target for a food reward when observed by an audience member in a neighbouring tank, which suggests that, when shooting, archerfish are sensitive to the visual presence of other fish and modify their behaviour in response to that presence. Moreover, given the change in other aspects of their behaviour when exposed to a conspecific, with the increase in mean number of aiming events per trial and the tendency to make fewer shots from further distances
Acknowledgments
We thank Helen Spence-Jones for acting as a secondary video scorer, as well as Tania Mendo, Barbara Klump and two anonymous referees who contributed valuable comments and suggestions that improved the manuscript. This study was funded by the Fisheries Society of the British Isles (studentship to N.A.R.J.).
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