Abstract
Behavioral laterality—typically represented by human handedness—is widely observed among animals. However, how laterality is acquired during development remains largely unknown. Here, we examined the effect of behavioral experience on the acquisition of lateralized predation at different developmental stages of the scale-eating cichlid fish Perissodus microlepis. Naïve juvenile fish without previous scale-eating experience showed motivated attacks on prey goldfish and an innate attack side preference. Following short-term predation experience, naïve juveniles learned a pronounced lateralized attack using their slightly skewed mouth morphology, and improved the velocity and amplitude of body flexion to succeed in foraging scales during dominant-side attack. Naïve young fish, however, did not improve the dynamics of flexion movement, but progressively developed attack side preference and speed to approach the prey through predation experience. Thus, the cichlid learns different aspects of predation behavior at different developmental stages. In contrast, naïve adults lost the inherent laterality, and they neither developed the lateralized motions nor increased their success rate of predation, indicating that they missed appropriate learning opportunities for scale-eating skills. Therefore, we conclude that behavioral laterality of the cichlid fish requires the integration of genetic basis and behavioral experiences during early developmental stages, immediately after they start scale-eating.
Highlights
The human body is almost symmetrical, humans prefer to use one side of the body when performing sophisticated or powerful tasks as in the case of working with hands
Previous studies exploring the development of the lateralized predation behavior in this species have reported the following findings[39,40]: first, a large-scale analysis of the stomach contents and mouth morphology of P. microlepis in Lake Tanganyika revealed that juveniles begin scale-eating at a standard body length (SL) of 35–45 mm and the attack side preference gradually develops as the fish grow[39]
Predation experiments were conducted to determine: (1) whether naïve P. microlepis at the three developmental stages retain the motivation for scale-eating without any previous experience, (2) whether they develop scale-eating behavior with experience, (3) whether they learn to attack from the dominant side corresponding to their mouth morphology, and (4) which kinetics of predation movement they develop with predation experience
Summary
The human body is almost symmetrical, humans prefer to use one side of the body when performing sophisticated or powerful tasks as in the case of working with hands. Widely distributed in Lake Tanganyika and have become specialized at feeding predominantly on the scales of other fish through a mouth with skewed morphology[31,32] Adults of this species attack prey fish from the preferred side to forage on the flank scales with their skewed mouths[33,34]. Previous studies exploring the development of the lateralized predation behavior in this species have reported the following findings[39,40]: first, a large-scale analysis of the stomach contents and mouth morphology of P. microlepis in Lake Tanganyika revealed that juveniles begin scale-eating at a standard body length (SL) of 35–45 mm and the attack side preference gradually develops as the fish grow[39]. Predation experiments were conducted to determine: (1) whether naïve P. microlepis at the three developmental stages retain the motivation for scale-eating without any previous experience, (2) whether they develop scale-eating behavior with experience, (3) whether they learn to attack from the dominant side corresponding to their mouth morphology, and (4) which kinetics of predation movement (i.e., the velocity and amplitude of body flexion, and approaching speed for prey) they develop with predation experience
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