Colorful Facial Markings Are Associated with Foraging Rates and Affiliative Relationships in a Wild Group-living Cichlid Fish

Overview

Journal Curr Zool

Publisher Oxford University Press

Date 2024 Mar 13

PMID 38476131

Authors

Brett M Culbert

James B Barnett

Isaac Y Ligocki

Matthew G Salena

Marian Y L Wong

Ian M Hamilton

Sigal Balshine

Affiliations

Soon will be listed here.

Abstract

Many animals use color to signal their quality and/or behavioral motivations. Colorful signals have been well studied in the contexts of competition and mate choice; however, the role of these signals in nonsexual, affiliative relationships is not as well understood. Here, we used wild social groups of the cichlid fish to investigate whether the size of a brightly colored facial patch was related to 1) individual quality, 2) social dominance, and/or 3) affiliative relationships. Individuals with larger patches spent more time foraging and tended to perform more aggressive acts against conspecific territory intruders. We did not find any evidence that the size of these yellow patches was related to social rank or body size, but dominant males tended to have larger patches than dominant females. Additionally, patch size had a rank-specific relationship with the number of affiliative interactions that individuals engaged in. Dominant males with large patches received affiliative acts from their groupmates compared to dominant males with small patches. However, subordinates with large patches tended to receive affiliative acts from their groupmates while performing affiliative acts themselves. Taken together, our results suggest that patch size reflects interindividual variation in foraging effort in this cichlid fish and offer some of the first evidence that colorful signals may shape affiliative relationships within wild social groups.

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