Innate responses to male sexual harassment in female mosquitofish |
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Authors: | Marco Dadda Andrea Pilastro Angelo Bisazza |
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Institution: | (1) Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, via Venezia 8, 35131 Padova, Italy;(2) Department of Biology, University of Padova, via U. Bassi 38/B, 35131 Padova, Italy |
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Abstract: | Male mosquitofish are very persistent in their sexual activity and harass any female they encounter. Gravid females pay a
large tribute to this intense male sexual activity in terms of reduced foraging efficiency. Previous observations have demonstrated
that gravid females, when chased by a male, dilute male harassment by moving closer to other females to form shoals. They
also approach other males to promote male competition, and when males differ in size, they preferentially target large males,
whose harassment is less intense. In this study, we tested whether the modulation of females’ social preferences in response
to male harassment is innate or learned. We tested social preference in three groups of females that differed in experience
of sexual harassment and in the factors affecting it. Females of the first group were reared without any sexual experience,
and pregnancy was induced through artificial insemination. The second group was composed of naive females kept singly with
a male; these females experienced sexual harassment but were prevented from experiencing the effects of male–male competition
and shoaling on the amount of male sexual harassment. In the third group (controls), females were reared in multi-male, multi-female
groups and could experience the modulating effects of social interactions on sexual harassment. When exposed to a harassing
male, females of the three groups immediately reduced their distance from another female, approached a group of males or moved
toward the larger of two available males. Moreover, the results for these three groups of females were similar to those obtained
in wild-caught females that were tested in the same three tests in a previous study (Dadda et al. An. Behav., 70:463–471, 2005). This suggests that the strategies adopted by females in response to male sexual harassment do not need to be learned through
specific experience of the social contexts. |
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Keywords: | Sexual harassment Shoaling Mosquitofish Poeciliid fish |
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