Aggression between males and females in fish

SCAIA MARÍA FLORENCIA; SALUSTRI CHIARA; MATÍAS PANDOLFI

Congreso; III Reuniao de Biologia do Comportamento do Cone Sul; 2021

Sociedade Brasileira de Etologia

There is growing evidence suggesting that some of the mechanisms regulating aggression are conserved in vertebrates. Despite the fact that females also display aggressive behavior, female aggression is still understudied. Moreover, unlike male-male aggression, little is known about mechanisms underlying male attacks toward conspecific females. In teleost fish intersexual aggression can be associated with pair-bonding and, considering that several monogamous species demonstrate size-assortative mating patterns, mate preference might be limited by intersexual aggression. The aims of this study were to analyze sex differences in intersexual aggression in Cichlasoma dimerus, and to compare the dynamics and behavioral repertoire with intrasexual aggression. Individuals were exposed to intersexual or intrasexual dyadic agonistic encounters for one hour, while all agonistic interactions were recorded in order to determine aggressive and submissive individual displays. Results suggest that there are no differences in latency between intersexual and intrasexual (male-male and female-female) encounters (p=0.7061, H=0.70). In most intersexual encounters, males showed higher aggression than females, resulting in male winners and female losers. PERMANOVA suggests that there are statistical differences in aggression when using the factor ´Sex´ (p-value=0.017, F=3.2493), and PCA biplot clusters data in two groups corresponding to males and females. However, even if intersexual contests show the same behavioral repertoire, mouth holdings, tail hits and chasing are less frequent than in intrasexual contests. When comparing intersexual and intrasexual encounters, PERMANOVA suggests that individual variation is not explained by sex or by type of contest, but when using the factor ´Status´ (p-value=0.001, F=31.053). PCA biplot clusters data in two groups corresponding to winners and losers, regardless of the sex or whether they were exposed to intrasexual or intersexual contest. Overall, these results suggest that even if males win most of intersexual encounters, variation on individual behavior is not clustered according to sex but to social status.