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Abstract
The environment plays a major role in shaping animal behavior; when animals experience a sudden change in environmental conditions they require time and energy to adjust; resulting in less time and energy that could otherwise be spent courting and mating (Chapman et al., 2009; Freeman, 2010).
Poecilia reticulata, are ideal organism for studying courtship behavior due to the year round sexual activeness of males, as well as their highly conspicuous display of courtship (Mozart, 1998).
In this experiment we tested the hypothesis that a change in water temperature will significantly affect the courtship behavior of P. reticulata, due to the increased cost of maintenance, which in turn would decrease the male guppies ability to court the females. (Jordan and Brooks, 2010).
We placed both a male and female guppy together in warm (23-26°C) and room temperature (18-23°C) water treatments, and recorded the amount of time the males spent courting the females. We found that the amount of time male guppies spent courting female guppies did not significantly differ between the warm and room temperature water treatments (Mann-Whitney Test: Z= 0.24751, N1= 22, N2= 22p > 0.0001).
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However, enough trials were not completed during our experiment for our results to be accurate. A longer period of time to conduct this study is highly suggested; more accurate data may provide researchers with a better background on understanding how animals respond to changes in temperature.
Introduction
The environment plays an important role in shaping courtship and mating behaviors of animals (Chapman et al., 2009).
In terms of biology, behavior is defined as the response to a stimulus, such as sudden changes in environmental conditions. Some animal behaviors are inherited by offspring (i.e. innate behavior).
But for most animals behavior is often condition- dependent and flexible; animals make decisions depending on the situation (Freeman, 2010).
Organisms require resources in order to survive, grow, and reproduce. However, all organisms are limited by the amount of time and energy they can devote to survival and reproduction; thus organisms must choose between maximizing survivorship, or maximizing fecundity (i.e. female reproduction rate) (Guevara-Fiore et al., 2010).
Therefore when animals experience a sudden change in environmental conditions they require time and energy to adjust; so by increasing the energy devoted to maintenance, animals decrease the resources available for reproducing (Chapman et al., 2009; Freeman, 2010).
The balance between maximizing survival or reproduction is a fitness tradeoff, which will lead to other tradeoffs (Freeman, 2010).
While for the most part females are usually the sex recognized for providing more investment in their young (i.e. they pay higher energetic costs to reproduce) recent studies suggest more emphasis should be placed on importance of males and their reproductive efforts; male deserve acknowledgement for the great deal of strain and energy they too put into reproducing (Guevara-Fiore et al., 2010; Jordan and Brooks, 2010).
Courtship behaviors generally demand high amounts of energy; so when males are forced to adjust to new environmental conditions, thus allocating their resources to maximize their individual survival, their reproductive effort will decrease (Jordan and Brook, 2010)
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Poecilia reticulata, more commonly known as guppies, are live bearing fish (i.e females give birth to live offspring); they are ideal organism for studying courtship behavior due to the year round sexual activeness of males, as well as their highly conspicuous display of courtship (Mozart, 1998).
Male courtship consists of the male guppy displaying its dorsal fin to the female, followed by its attempt to thrust at the female guppy (Mozart, 1998).
Both male and female P. reticulata will undergo a sudden change in water temperature from what they are accustomed to. Any changes in courtship or mating behavior among the guppies in warm and room temperature water treatments will be observed and recorded so that we can determine if and to what extent their courtship behavior is affected by temperature changes in their environment. The purpose of this experiment was to observe and analyze how mating habits are affected by a sudden change in environmental conditions, and investigate the role of temperature on animal behavior. In this experiment we tested the hypothesis that a change in water temperature will significantly affect the courtship behavior of Poecilia reticulata. We predicted that the male guppies would spend less time courting the female guppies in the warm water, because adjusting to the new environmental conditions will cost the guppies both time and energy, resulting in less time and energy for males to spend courting and mating with females (Chapman et al., 2009; Freeman, 2010).
Material and Methods
In our study we used a small species of fish called Poecilia reticulate, more commonly known as guppies, which had been raised under laboratory conditions at Texas State University. During the experiment there were three different guppy populations in tanks labeled females only, males only, and mixed. Fish used in our experiment were chosen at random from different tanks, and had possibly been used in other experiments by different lab groups. Our study took place over a three week time period; during this time we collected data on the time spent courting by male guppies, in both a warm water tank and a room temperature water tank, to help us determine the effects of temperature on courtship behavior by male guppies.
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On the first week we simply experimented with male and female guppies in warm and room temperature water. At the end of lab that day we finally formed our experimental hypothesis, which we did not begin testing until the following week. Week two, our actual experiment began. First we labeled two our two tanks; one room temperature (18-23°C) and the other we labeled warm water (23-26°C).
At the very beginning of lab, we placed a heater in the designated warm water tank to allow enough time for the water to heat up. While we waited for the tank to warm up we filled a container about halfway with water to use for the transfer of guppies to our experimental tanks. To obtain the guppies we would take the mesh net catcher and gently trap the fish against the glass of the tank, and then we would place them in the transfer container. We started out by capturing two female and two male guppies. Once the water reached around 23°C we placed one guppy couple (a male and female) in the warm water tank, and one in the room temperature tank; the room temperature tank acted as our control. The couples in both tanks spent a total of ten minutes together, during the ten minutes we recorded the time male guppies spent courting with a stop watch, the frequency they mated, and the temperature of the water -making sure it remained constant for the specified tank during each trial. After the ten minutes was up we switched the couples; we moved the guppies in the room temperature tank to the warm water tank and vice versa, moved the guppies in the warm water to the room temperature tank. We repeated this procedure for a total of ten trials, and replaced the guppies as we saw necessary. Sometimes the chosen female was too small or too big, so after testing her in both tanks we would switch her out for a size more proportional to the male. Other times we noticed one of the guppies might appear to look ill so again we would replace them for a more suitable one. On week three we performed the same procedures as the previous week and continued recording the time spent courting and frequency of mating. Once all the data was collected we conducted a Mann-Whitney U test comparing the amount of time male guppies spent courting in warm water and the amount of time male guppies spent courting in room temperature water.
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Results
We found that the amount of time male guppies spent courting female guppies did not significantly differ between the warm and room temperature water treatments (Mann-Whitney Test: Z= 0.24751, N1= 22, N2= 22p > 0.0001) However male guppies in the room temperature water (18-23°C) did spend slightly more time courting females then they did in warm water (23-26°C) (Fig.1).
Actual mating never occurred between any of the guppies in our experiment.
Discussion
L.A. Jordan and R.C Brooks (2010) found that increased male reproductive effort lead to a tradeoff in decreased survival effort. This kind of fitness tradeoff works both ways, therefore if an individual invests more resources in maintenance and growth, reproductive efforts should decrease (Freeman, 2010).
Which is why we expected the mean time male guppies spent courting females would significantly decrease. And while we were able to notice a slight difference in the mean time male P.reticulata spent courting females, the results of our experiment failed to support our hypothesis that a sudden change in water temperature will significantly affect courtship behavior. A major problem we encountered during this experiment was time management; we were unable to complete a sufficient amount of trials. A longer period of time to conduct this study is highly suggested; more accurate data may provide researchers with a better background on understanding how animals respond to changes in temperature.
Literature Cited
Chapman, B. B., Morrell, L. J., Krause, J. 2009. Plasticity in male courtship behavior as a function of light intensity in guppies. Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol. 63: 1757-1763.
Freeman, S. 2010. Biological Science, 4th ed. Benjamin Cummings, San Francisco, CA, pp.1019-1030.
Guevara-Fiore, P., Stapley, J., Watt, P. J. 2010. Mating effort and female receptivity: how do male guppies decide when to invest in sex?. Behav. Ecol. Sociobiol. 64: 1665-1672.
Jordan, L. A., Brooks, R. C. 2010. The lifetime costs of increased male reproductive effort: courtship, copulation, and the Coolidge effect. J. Evol. Biol. 23: 2403-2409.
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Mozart, H. 1998. Guppies: Keeping & Breeding Them in Captivity. Chelsea House Publications, NY, 64 pp.
Figure and Figure Legend
Figure 1: The mean time spent (seconds) by male guppies (Poecilia reticulate) courting females in room temperature water (18-23°C) and in warm water(23-26°C).
The male guppies spent slightly more time on average courting females in the room temperature water (mean + s.e. time spent courting (seconds): Room temperature = 72.407 + 23.469; Warm temperature = 50.027 + 12.894).