title: Electrical signalling of dominance in a wild population of electric fish.
abstract: Animals often use signals to communicate their dominance status and avoid the costs of combat. We investigated whether the frequency of the electric organ discharge (EOD) of the weakly electric fish, Sternarchorhynchus sp., signals the dominance status of individuals. We correlated EOD frequency with body size and found a strong positive relationship. We then performed a competition experiment in which we found that higher frequency individuals were dominant over lower frequency ones. Finally, we conducted an electrical playback experiment and found that subjects more readily approached and attacked the stimulus electrodes when they played low-frequency signals than high-frequency ones. We propose that EOD frequency communicates dominance status in this gymnotiform species.
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, McGill University, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. vincent.fugere@mail.mcgill.ca
authors.forename: Vincent
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Fugère
authors.forename: Hernán
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Ortega
authors.forename: Rüdiger
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Krahe
mesh_terms: D000374:Aggression; D000819:Animal Communication; D000818:Animals; D049628:Body Size; D023702:Gymnotiformes / Q000033:anatomy & histology / Q000502:physiology*; D006608:Hierarchy, Social; D012930:Social Dominance