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Coloration impacts sexual behavior through dominance without any color preferences in the short-living fish Nothobranchius furzeri

Fassiau, Gaƫl
(2023)

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Fassiau_99872100_2023.pdf
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Details

Supervisors
Silvestre, FrƩdƩric ; Mouchet, SƩbastien
Faculty
FacultƩ des sciences
Degree label
Master [120] en biologie des organismes et Ʃcologie, Ơ finalitƩ approfondie
Abstract
Color is a particularly available and quantifiable phenotype to assess the different pressures exhibited through natural and sexual selection. Color is dynamic and deeply involved in a lot of processes including communication and adaptation. In that case, color is useful phenotype to study both sexual behaviors, environment-related changes and ageing. In this study, the shortest-lived vertebrate model Nothobranchius furzeri was first used to understand how color patterns vary under social and stressful condition following ageing process. The effects of color traits on sexual and non-sexual behaviors were assessed to highlight some features. New methods are described here providing an accessible and open-source way to uniformly assess color patterns in killifish. It has been reported that color and pattern area increase following adult stage but do not fade at older age. One failed to highlight the effect of chemical stress on morphological trait, but it is suspected to speed up color appearance rather than pattern morphology. More importantly, it is strongly suggested that some color patterns in N. furzeri are intrasexually selected as they rely on social context like dominance rather than mate choice. This is strengthened by the fact that some patterns fade after 12 weeks of development, following low dominance pressure. In this paper two patterns were identified that might be involved in dominance and sexual behavior in N. furzeri; anal fin-related red and dorsal fin-related dark patterns with multiple evidences. Further studies are now expected to explain how dominance expresses itself between males and whether dominance alone allows the maintenance of such bright color pattern in turbid environment.