Social role of sounds in fishes

Recording fishes at Museum-Aquarium of Liège (BE)

Sound production is an innate behaviour

During my PhD, at the Laboratory of Sensory Neuro-Ethology of the University of Lyon - Saint-Etienne, I was interested in the social role of sounds in fish. I have shown that in the African Cichlidae Metriaclima zebra, aggressive behaviors appear in the first days of an individual's life, probably as a result of competition for food and / or space, before the complete behavioral repertoire was observed.

Sounds mediate important social information

Sounds are usually produced during short-distance interactions when the transmitter and receiver are already in visual interactions. By coupling or dissociating these two channels of communication, and by developing auditory playback experiments, I have shown that in adults, sounds alone have no effect on the aggressive behavior of the receiving individual. In the presence of visual information, acoustic signals induce a decrease in aggression thus avoiding the escalation to violent fights. Another study showed that dominant males respond more strongly to sound by increasing their territorial activity. Acoustic signals could therefore also inform the presence and / or motivation of a potential competitor.

The sounds are also able to inform on the hierarchical status of congeners, even on their identity. I tested the hypothesis of an individual acoustic signature in Metriaclima zebra by developing a fine analysis of the signals thanks to the software R. The results obtained ascend that sounds only allow to classify the individuals according to their size, allowing to have a proxy of their hierarchical status.

Selection of articles

Bertucci F, Attia J, Beauchaud M & Mathevon N. 2013. The relevance of temporal cues in a fish sound: a first experimental investigation using modified signals in cichlids. Anim. Cog., 16, 45-54.
Bertucci F, Attia J, Beauchaud M & Mathevon N. 2012. Sounds produced by the cichlid fish Metriaclima zebra allow reliable estimation of size and provide information on individual identity. J. Fish Biol., 80, 752-766.
Bertucci F, Scaion D, Beauchaud M, Attia J & Mathevon N. 2012. Ontogenesis of agonistic vocalizations in the cichlid fish Metriaclima zebra. C. R. Biol., 335, 529-534.
Bertucci F, Beauchaud M, Attia J & Mathevon N. 2010. Sounds modulate males’ aggressiveness in a cichlid fish. Ethology, 116, 1179-1188.

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