Fish Behavior
• Fish are more intelligent than they appear.
• In many areas, such as memory, their cognitive
powers match or exceed those of ‘higher’
vertebrates including non-human primates.
• Fish hold the records for the relative brain
weights of vertebrates. Most vertebrate species
have similar brain-to-body weight ratios.
• Action or re-action to stimuli
• Happens in the brain (non-motor) and can be
manifested through muscular response, but often
involves both
• There can be a temporal component to the actual
behavior (learning, e.g. feed training)
• Short-term trigger for behavior
• Long-term evolutionary significance/adaptation
• Animals behave in ways that maximize their
fitness
Fixed Action Patterns
Fixed Action Patterns
• stereotypical innate behavior.
• The organism will carry it out almost no
matter what, even if it doesn’t seem
appropriate.
• These are all part of a category of behaviors
very important to survival and/or fitness.
Fixed Action Patterns
Male three spined stickleback: attacks other
males with red bellies – attacks anything
red
Innate behavior
• Brood parasitism (Cichlid/catfish)
• Ability to confront novel stimuli, learn about them
and adjust behavior is indicative of intelligence
and self awareness.
• Intelligence involves brain development, parental
investment or training
Learning
• Change in behavior based on experience
Maturation is behavior change based largely on ability
due to development (eg. Use of tool)
paradise fish which avoid places where they have
experienced a single attack by a predator and continue to
do so for many months
• Habituation
Loss of responsiveness due to repetition
• Imprinting
Learning in a critical time period (tightly correlated with
innate behavior
Conditioning: Pavlov
Associating a stimulus with punishment or reward (can
also be trial and error) (visual experiments)
Associative learning/conditioning
• Associating one stimulus with another
• Pavlov: classical conditioning. Associating an
arbitrary stimulus with reward or punishment
• Operant conditioning: learning through trial and
error. BF Skinner’s experiments. This has formed
the basis for much animal training.
• Classical and operant conditioning often work
together
• Rainbow trout can be trained to press a bar to
get food, and they remember this three
months after last seeing the bar.
• Red Sea clownfish can recognize their mate 30
days after it was experimentally removed from
the home anemone.
• Channel catfish can remember the human
voice call announcing food five years after last
hearing that call
• Goldfish remember the colour of a tube
dispensing food one year after the last tube
presentation.
• Sockeye salmon still react to a light signal that
precedes food arrival up to eight months since
the last reinforcement.
• Some common rudd and European chub could
remember the person who trained them to feed
from the hand, even after a 6-month break.
• Crimson-spotted rainbowfish can learn how to
escape from a trawl by swimming through a small
hole in the center and they remember this
technique 11 months later.
Cognition
• Consciousness and awareness
• The connection between nervous system
function and behavior
• Spatial orientation and mapping
– Migration: Piloting, orientation
(directional headings), navigation
(relative location)
– The role of learning in migration
Reproductive behavior
• Sexual selection
– Courtship
– Female choice
– Male aggression
Mating strategies
• Promiscuous
• Monogamous
• Polygamous: polygynous, polyandrous
Fish Behaviors
• Migration
• Shoaling
• Feeding
• Aggression
• Resting
• Communication
Migration
• Spatial orientation and mapping
– Migration: Piloting, orientation
(directional headings), navigation
(relative location)
– The role of learning in migration
– (magnetite, light, etc.)
– Fish orient themselves using landmarks and may
use mental maps based on multiple landmarks or
symbols.
– Fish behaviour in mazes reveals that they possess
spatial memory and visual discrimination.
Fish Migration
• Fish migrations are usually round-trip
• Reasons for migration
– Food gathering
– Temperature adjustment
– Breeding
Timing of migrations
– Annual
– Daily
– generational
Classification of Fish Migration
• Diadromous – Travel between sea & fresh water
– Anadromous – most of life at sea, breed in fresh water
– Catadromous – most of life in fresh water, breed at sea
– Amphidromous – migrate between water types at some
stage other than breeding
• Potamodromous – Migrate within a fresh water system
• Ocenodromous – Migrate to different regions of the ocean
Reasons for Migrations
• Take advantage of different habitats
– Feeding
– Protection
• Avoid adverse conditions
• Meet requirements for reproduction
Orientation During Migration
• Orientation to gradients of temperature,
salinity, and chemicals
• Orientation by the sun
• Orientation to geomagnetic and geoelectric
fields
Disadvantages of Migrations
• Expenditure of energy
– Most must store energy before migration
• Risk from predation
Adjustments Required Due to
Migrations
• Adjusting physiologically to new water
conditions
– Temperature
– Light
– Water chemistry
• Many migratory species are now rapidly
declining due to changes caused by man
Social behaviour
• Solitary
• Shoal - any group of fishes that remains
together for social reasons
• School - a polarized, synchronized shoal (has
coordinated, directed movements)
Functions of Schooling Behavior
• Hydrodynamic efficiency
• Reduced predation risk
• Feeding
• Reproduction
Functions of Schooling Behavior
• Hydrodynamic efficiency
– individuals obtain reduction in drag by following in
“slip-stream” of neighbors
– limited evidence in support of this
Functions of Schooling Behavior
• Reduced predation risk
– creates patchy distribution of prey - large areas
with no prey
– once school is found, individual risk of being
captured is reduced by dilution
– confusion of prey by protean displays,
encirclement, other behaviors
Functions of Schooling Behavior
• Feeding
– increases effective search space for the individual
(more eyes, separated by greater distance)
– coordinated movements to help break up schools
of prey - analogous to pack behavior in wolves - by
tunas, jacks
Functions of Schooling Behavior
• Reproduction
– increases likelihood of finding a mate
– facilitates coordination of preparedness
(behavioral and pheromonal cues)
– facilitates arriving at right spawning site at right
time
Fish Behavior & Communication
• Shoaling
• A social grouping of fish
• Occurs throughout life in about 25% of fish
species
• Half of all fish shoal at some time
• Benefits of Shoaling
• Gives a predator many moving targets
– Confuses predators
– Increases chances at the individual level
– Increases food finding ability
• Keeps potential mates in close proximity
Fish Behavior & Communication
• Pods
• Tightly grouped school
• Move as a single unit (including making
quick turns)
• Makes the school appear like one large
organism
– Protection from predators
Liabilities of Grouping Behavior
• Increased likelihood of disease & parasite
transmission
• Becoming more conspicuous to some
predators
– Harvested more easily by man
Feeding Behavior
• Morphology is often a key to feeding behavior – many
fish have specialized habits
• Actual feeding may depend on what is available
• Optimal foraging – Take whatever is closest, as long as
it is suitable food
– Highest quality of food for the least amount of
effort
Optimal Foraging
• All else being equal, take the largest prey
• Don’t choose prey that takes more energy
than it provides
• Be in a habitat that provides the type of
food you are looking for
Risk Sensitive Foraging
• Foraging is sometimes restricted because of
undo risk
– It does not make sense to look for prey
where you will become the prey
– Must balance energy gain possibility with
risk of obtaining the energy
Finding Food
• Visual detection
– Diurnal feeders
– Means being in the open in bright light
• Olfaction
– Common in bottom dwelling species
• Taste
Agressive Behavior
• Direct charges
– Often includes biting
• Ritualistic displays
– Modified swimming
– Flaring gill covers
– Color changes
– Threatening movements
Reasons for Aggressive Behavior
• Defense of territory
– Usually connected with reproduction
– Sometimes to keep food source
• Defense of brood
• Repelling competitors for mates
Resting Behavior
• Inactive state
• Some fish spend a large part of the day
not doing anything
• Many species change color patterns
• Most fish rest on or near the substrate
• Many fish have a specified time of day
when resting takes place
• Some fish never rest (Sleep swimming?)
– Must keep moving (sharks)
Communication
• Visual signals
• Auditory signals
• Chemical signals
• Electric signals
Signals
• Visual Signals
• Most important communication signal
• Large variety of signals
– Different species use different “languages”
– Some cues are recognized between species
How visual signals are produced
• Types of coloring
– Pigments
• Colored compounds
• Located in chromatophores
– In mostly in skin, but also in eyes & organs
• Controlled by hormones & nerves
– Structural colors
• Reflection of light
Kinds of Pigments in Fish
• Carotenoid pigments
– Bright reds & yellow
– Green when they overly blue structural color
• Melanins
– Dark red, brown, black
• Purines (guanine)
– Colorless crystals responsible for some
structural colors
Purpose of Color Patterns
• Thermoregulation
– Probably not very significant
• Intraspecific communication
• Evasion of predators
Common Color Patterns
• Red coloration
• Poster colors
• Disruptive colors
• Countershading
• Eye ornamentation
• Lateral stripes
• Polychromatism
Auditory Signals
• Most fish produce sounds
• Uses for sound
– Courtship singing
– Territorial defense
– Signaling shoal
Sound Production
• Stridulation
– Rubbing hard surfaces together
– Low frequency sounds
• Vibration of swimbladder
– Can give loud croaking
• Incidental to other activities
Chemical Signals
• Pheromones released into the water
– Reproductive cues
– Recognition
• Schreckstoff = fear scents
– Predator avoidance
– Produced in epidermal cells
Electrical Signals
• Muscle contractions give off a weak
-Some fish have electric producing organs
– Used to locate prey or conspecifics
Behavior in Aquarium
• Loss of Appetite
• Difficulty Swimming
• Hovering Near Tank Surface
• Fish Swimming Quickly
• Fighting Among Tank Mates
• Rearranging Tank Objects
• Fin Nipping
• Fish Are Hiding