Studying fish social behavior and cognition: implications for fish welfare and conservation

Abstract

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Within vertebrates teleost fish are the most diverse and plastic taxa in terms of social behavior. With over 29,000 species described so far, one can find all different types of social organization, mating systems and parental care types. Moreover, it is relatively common to find variation of these characters within closely related species, which makes them suitable for comparative studies on the evolution of social behavior (e.g. variation in mating systems and parental care type in African cichlids). Fish are also champions of social plasticity, as can be illustrated by the flexible patterns of sexual expression, as in the case of protrandrous and protogynous sex-change, simultaneous hermaphroditism and intra-sexual variation in the form of discrete alternative male phenotypes. Complex cognitive abilities used in social interactions have also evolved in fish, such as individual recognition, transitive inference and social learning. Therefore, teleosts offer unique opportunities to study both the evolution and the function of social behavior and cognition. In this talk I will summarize the work that our lab has been doing to establish zebrafish as a model organism for the study of social behavior and cognition and I will illustrate how knowledge on this are can be applied to fish welfare and to conservation issues.

Keywords

• Animal Welfare
• Cognition
• Social Behaviour
• conservation
• Teleost fishes