Rowland Context colo.. - TerpConnect

More documents

Recommendations

Info

926 Animal Behaviour, 52, 5 conflict hypothesis that ethologists (Tinbergen & van Iersel 1947; Tinbergen 1952; Morris 1956; Baerends 1975) originally proposed to explain the origin and evolution of displays. The conflict hypothesis maintains that organisms in which the mutually incompatible tendencies to attack and flee are equally activated are unlikely to express either behaviour pattern, but instead perform a threat display (Hinde 1981). We suggest that the context of an encounter modifies the behavioural response by influencing the motivational tendencies of the animal. The dual-process model proposes that it is the interaction between internal processes (primarily aggression and fear) and external stimuli (e.g. the colour of the intruder and the site of the encounter) that determines attack response in male stickleback. That is, when a male is in his territory, his overall level of aggression is higher than when he is in a neutral area. Thus, even though brighter males are more likely to attack (Rowland 1984; McLennan & McPhail 1989), a defending male within its own territory should be selected to meet this challenge by quickly responding to bright intruders with appropriately high levels of aggression. When a male is outside his territory, however, bright opponents may activate fear more strongly than aggression and thereby prevent the former male from fully expressing attack behaviour. Hence, response to relative colour intensity would be expected to be context-dependent in male stickleback. Our model of motivational processes underlying the agonistic behaviour of three-spined stickleback is consistent with the predictions made by Parker’s (1974) model of the evolution of fighting. If two males have equal resource-holding power but one male controls a resource (the territory owner) and the other is an intruder, then the territory owner would be expected to escalate if loss of the resource would lead to a larger fitness decrease for the territory owner than a fitness increase for the intruder (Parker 1974). Thus, the territory owner should be more likely than the intruder to escalate (attack) because the owner has already invested in the territory; in short, the costs are higher to obtain a new territory than to retain the present one. By contrast, the intruder must pay the initial investment costs before gaining any fitness benefits (Parker 1974). In three-spined stickleback, males without territories (i.e. males in neutral tanks) are less likely to attack because searching for an unoccupied territory may be less costly than fighting for one already occupied particularly if the owner (i.e. the video image male) is bright red and of a higher resourceholding power than the attacker. When males are on their own territories (i.e. in home tanks), however, they tend to defend their territory against all attackers with less regard for resourceholding power. Therefore, the dual-process model provides a mechanism by which individuals can adopt situation-specific fighting strategies. This study illustrates the importance of the spatial location of an agonistic encounter in mediating the response of three-spined stickleback males to the nuptial coloration of rivals. Although we infer a change in the internal state of the male as a determinant of his response, the underlying physiological basis for this effect is unknown. Further research into the proximate mechanism of this context-induced motivational switch should provide additional insight into the control and evolution of territorial behaviour. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS We thank J. J. Jenkins and S. L. Kight for their comments and suggestions on the manuscript. This research was supported by grants from the Indiana University Center for the Integrative Study of Animal Behavior and from the Indiana Academy of Science. K.J.B. was also supported by a grant from the Department of Biology at Indiana University. REFERENCES van den Assem, J. 1967. Territory in the three-spined stickleback Gasterosteus aculeatus. Behaviour (Suppl.), 16, 1–164. Baerends, G. P. 1975. An evaluation of the conflict hypothesis as an explanatory principle for the evolution of displays. In: Function and Evolution in Behaviour (Ed. by G. P. Baerends, C. Beer & A. Manning), pp. 187–227. Oxford: Clarendon Press. Baerends, G. P. 1985. Do the dummy experiments with sticklebacks support the IRM-concept? Behaviour, 93, 258–277. Barlow, G. W. & Siri, P. 1994. Polychromatic Midas cichlids respond to dummy opponents: color, contrast and context. Behaviour, 130, 77–112. Collias, N. E. 1990. Statistical evidence for aggressive response to red by male three-spined sticklebacks. Anim. Behav., 39, 401–403.
Bolyard & Rowland: Attack to red by stickleback 927 Giraldeau, L-A. & Ydenberg, R. 1987. The center-edge effect: the result of a war of attrition between territorial contestants? Auk, 104, 535–538. Hinde, R. A. 1956. The biological significance of the territories of birds. Ibis, 98, 340–369. Hinde, R. A. 1981. Animal signals: ethological and games-theory approaches are not incompatible. Anim. Behav., 29, 535–542. Huntingford, F. 1977. Inter- and intraspecific aggression in male sticklebacks. Copeia, 1, 158–159. van Iersel, J. J. A. 1958. Some aspects of territorial behaviour of the male three-spined stickleback. Arch. néerl. Zool., 13 (Supplement 1), 383–400. McLennan, D. A. & McPhail, J. D. 1989. Experimental investigations of the evolutionary significance of sexually dimorphic nuptial coloration in Gasterosteus aculeatus (L.): the relationship between male colour and male behaviour. Can. J. Zool., 67, 1778–1782. Miczek, K. A. 1977. Effects of L-dopa, D-amphetamine and cocaine on intruder evoked aggression in rats and mice. Prog. Neuro-Psychopharmacol., 1, 271–277. Morris, D. 1956. The function and causation of courtship ceremonies. In: Patterns of Reproductive Behaviour, pp. 128–152. New York: McGraw-Hill. Muckensturm, B. 1968. La significance de la livrée nuptiale de l’Épinoche. Rev. comp. Anim., 3, 39–64. Myrberg, A. A. & Thresher, R. E. 1974. Interspecific aggression and its relevance to the concept of territoriality in reef fishes. Am. Zool., 14, 81–96. Parker, G. A. 1974. Assessment strategy and the evolution of fighting behaviour. J. theor. Biol., 47, 223–243. Peeke, H. V. S., Wyers, E. J. & Herz, M. J. 1969. Waning of the aggressive response to male models in the three-spined stickleback, Gasterosteus aculeatus L. Anim. Behav., 17, 224–228. ter Pelkwijk, J. J. & Tinbergen, N. 1937. Eine Reizbiologische Analyse einiger Verhaltensweisen von Gasterosteus aculeatus L. Z. Tierpsychol., 1, 193–200. Rowland, W. J. 1982. The effects of male coloration on stickleback aggression: a reexamination. Behaviour, 80, 118–126. Rowland, W. J. 1983. Interspecific aggression and dominance in Gasterosteus. Environ. Biol. Fish, 8, 269–277. Rowland, W. J. 1984. The relationships among nuptial coloration, courtship, and aggression in male threespined sticklebacks, Gasterosteus aculeatus. Can. J. Zool., 62, 999–1004. Rowland, W. J. 1994. Proximate determinants of stickleback behaviour: an evolutionary perspective. In: The Evolutionary Biology of the Threespine Stickleback (Ed. by M. A. Bell & S. A. Foster), pp. 297–344. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rowland, W. J. & Sevenster, P. 1985. Sign stimuli in the threespine stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus): a reexamination and extension of some classic experiments. Behaviour, 93, 241–257. Rowland, W. J., Bolyard, K. J. & Halpern, A. D. 1995. The dual effect of stickleback nuptial coloration on rivals: manipulation of a graded signal using video playback. Anim. Behav., 50, 267–272. Simpson, B. S. 1985. Effects of location in territory and distance from neighbours on the use of song repertoires by Carolina wrens. Anim. Behav., 33, 793–804. Tinbergen, N. 1948. Social releasers and the experimental method for their study. Wilson Bull., 60, 6–51. Tinbergen, N. 1951. The Study of Instinct. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Tinbergen, N. 1952. ‘Derived’ activities: their causation, biological significance, origin, and emancipation during evolution. Q. Rev. Biol., 27, 1032. Tinbergen, N. 1953. Social Behaviour in Animals. London: Methuen. Tinbergen, N. and van Iersel, J. J. A. 1947. ‘Displacement reactions’ in the three-spined stickleback. Behaviour, 1, 56–63. Wootton, R. J. 1970. Aggression in the early phases of the reproductive cycle of the male three-spined stickleback, Gasterosteus aculeatus. Anim. Behav., 18, 740–746. Wootton, R. J. 1971. Measures of the aggression of parental male three-spined sticklebacks. Behaviour, 40, 228–262.
Page 1 and 2: Anim. Behav., 1996, 52, 923-927 Con
Page 3: Bolyard & Rowland: Attack to red by

Rowland Context colo.. - TerpConnect

You also want an ePaper? Increase the reach of your titles

Delete template?

Save as template?