Cutting the Gordian knot： Complex signaling in African cichlids is more than multimodal  

作　　者：Moira J. VAN STAADEN Adam R. SMITH 

机构地区：[1]Department of Biological Sciences and JP Scott Center for Neuroscience, Mind & Behavior, Bowling Green State University OH 43403, USA [2]Department of Biology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, 20742, USA

出　　处：《Current Zoology》2011年第2期237-252,共16页动物学报（英文版）

摘　　要：The active transmission of information from sender to receiver is a fundamental component of communication, and is therefore a primary facet in evolutionary models of sexual selection. Research in several systems has underlined the importance of multiple sensory modalities in courtship signals. However, we still tend to think of individuals as having a relatively static signal in consecutive communicative events. While this may be true for certain traits such as body size or coloration, behaviorally modulated signals can quickly violate this assumption. In this work, we explore how intraspecific variation may be an important component of interspecific signal divergence using cichlid fishes from Lake Malawi. Behavioral analyses were made using six species of Malawian cichlids from two divergent genera. While interspecific differences were found between congeners based on species-level analyses of both acoustic and audiovisual signals, intraspecific variation was of a similar magnitude. Specifically, individual fishes were found to possess highly plastic signal repertoires. This finding was ubiquitous across all species and resuited in a great deal of overlap between heterospecific individuals, despite statistically distinct species means. These results demonstrate that some aspects of courtship in Malawian cichlids are more plastic than previously proposed, and that studies must account for signal variability within individuals. We propose here that behavioral variability in signaling is important in determining the communication landscape on which signals are perceived. We review potential complexity deriving from multimodal signaling, discuss the sources for such lability, and suggest ways in which this issue may be approached experimentally .

关 键 词：CICHLID Motivation Intraspecific variability Mate preference MULTIMODAL 

分 类 号：TN911.3[电子电信—通信与信息系统] F512.4[电子电信—信息与通信工程]