Methods

Fieldwork

In Corsica, Megan and other members of the Alonzo lab collect their data.

Megan SCUBA dives to find nesting males (NMs). Cameras are set up, one with a close shot (nest view) and one with a wide shot (wide view). First, they are recorded in their nest for ten minutes before any treatment is done. Then, the fish get captured and brought back to the lab to be injected with Isotocin, the Isotocin antagonist, or with saline (the control). Once injected, the nesting males are released back into their nesting areas. The cameras start recording after a waiting period of 10 minutes for the nesting males to acclimate to their nest. Two ten-minute-long recordings are made, one 40 minutes post-injection (Post 1) and one 75 minutes post-injection (Post 2). This process gets repeated at many nests near the lab area.

Lab Work

Back at UCSC, the videos recorded are analyzed using a program called BORIS, which is used to track the many behaviors that the nesting male, satelites, sneakers, and females engage in. Megan and a group of undergrads (including me!) work through the many videos that she has taken during her fieldwork period.

Here are some of the behaviors that we take note of in BORIS for these trials:

NM Spawning with a female
NM Chase (chasing females, satellites, sneakers, heterospecifics, etc.)
NM Follow (following females towards and away from the nest)
NM Position (where he is in comparison to the nest at every minute mark)
NM Fanning (The NM fans the eggs in his nest to ventilate them)
Submissions (satellites submitting to the NMs)
Satellite Chase (chasing females and sneakers)
Sneaking (sneaker attempting to spawn with females as the NMs spawn with females)

Once all of these behaviors are coded for every video, we can extract the data from all of the BORIS files and create data visualizations to better understand the behaviors of the Ocellated Wrasse, and to understand how Isotocin and its antagonist hormone affect its behavior.

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