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Using a robotic fish to investigate individual differences in social responsiveness in the guppy

Responding towards the actions of others is one of the most important behavioural traits whenever animals of the same species interact. Mutual influences among interacting individuals may modulate the social responsiveness seen and thus make it often difficult to study the level and individual varia...

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Autores principales: Bierbach, David, Landgraf, Tim, Romanczuk, Pawel, Lukas, Juliane, Nguyen, Hai, Wolf, Max, Krause, Jens
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6124066/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30225087
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.181026
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author Bierbach, David
Landgraf, Tim
Romanczuk, Pawel
Lukas, Juliane
Nguyen, Hai
Wolf, Max
Krause, Jens
author_facet Bierbach, David
Landgraf, Tim
Romanczuk, Pawel
Lukas, Juliane
Nguyen, Hai
Wolf, Max
Krause, Jens
author_sort Bierbach, David
collection PubMed
description Responding towards the actions of others is one of the most important behavioural traits whenever animals of the same species interact. Mutual influences among interacting individuals may modulate the social responsiveness seen and thus make it often difficult to study the level and individual variation in responsiveness. Here, open-loop biomimetic robots that provide standardized, non-interactive social cues can be a useful tool. These robots are not affected by the live animal's actions but are assumed to still represent valuable and biologically relevant social cues. As this assumption is crucial for the use of biomimetic robots in behavioural studies, we hypothesized (i) that meaningful social interactions can be assumed if live animals maintain individual differences in responsiveness when interacting with both a biomimetic robot and a live partner. Furthermore, to study the level of individual variation in social responsiveness, we hypothesized (ii) that individual differences should be maintained over the course of multiple tests with the robot. We investigated the response of live guppies (Poecilia reticulata) when allowed to interact either with a biomimetic open-loop-controlled fish robot—‘Robofish’—or with a live companion. Furthermore, we investigated the responses of live guppies when tested three times with Robofish. We found that responses of live guppies towards Robofish were weaker compared with those of a live companion, most likely as a result of the non-interactive open-loop behaviour of Robofish. Guppies, however, were consistent in their individual responses between a live companion and Robofish, and similar individual differences in response towards Robofish were maintained over repeated testing even though habituation to the test environment was detectable. Biomimetic robots like Robofish are therefore a useful tool for the study of social responsiveness in guppies and possibly other small fish species.
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spelling pubmed-61240662018-09-17 Using a robotic fish to investigate individual differences in social responsiveness in the guppy Bierbach, David Landgraf, Tim Romanczuk, Pawel Lukas, Juliane Nguyen, Hai Wolf, Max Krause, Jens R Soc Open Sci Biology (Whole Organism) Responding towards the actions of others is one of the most important behavioural traits whenever animals of the same species interact. Mutual influences among interacting individuals may modulate the social responsiveness seen and thus make it often difficult to study the level and individual variation in responsiveness. Here, open-loop biomimetic robots that provide standardized, non-interactive social cues can be a useful tool. These robots are not affected by the live animal's actions but are assumed to still represent valuable and biologically relevant social cues. As this assumption is crucial for the use of biomimetic robots in behavioural studies, we hypothesized (i) that meaningful social interactions can be assumed if live animals maintain individual differences in responsiveness when interacting with both a biomimetic robot and a live partner. Furthermore, to study the level of individual variation in social responsiveness, we hypothesized (ii) that individual differences should be maintained over the course of multiple tests with the robot. We investigated the response of live guppies (Poecilia reticulata) when allowed to interact either with a biomimetic open-loop-controlled fish robot—‘Robofish’—or with a live companion. Furthermore, we investigated the responses of live guppies when tested three times with Robofish. We found that responses of live guppies towards Robofish were weaker compared with those of a live companion, most likely as a result of the non-interactive open-loop behaviour of Robofish. Guppies, however, were consistent in their individual responses between a live companion and Robofish, and similar individual differences in response towards Robofish were maintained over repeated testing even though habituation to the test environment was detectable. Biomimetic robots like Robofish are therefore a useful tool for the study of social responsiveness in guppies and possibly other small fish species. The Royal Society 2018-08-08 /pmc/articles/PMC6124066/ /pubmed/30225087 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.181026 Text en © 2018 The Authors. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Biology (Whole Organism)
Bierbach, David
Landgraf, Tim
Romanczuk, Pawel
Lukas, Juliane
Nguyen, Hai
Wolf, Max
Krause, Jens
Using a robotic fish to investigate individual differences in social responsiveness in the guppy
title Using a robotic fish to investigate individual differences in social responsiveness in the guppy
title_full Using a robotic fish to investigate individual differences in social responsiveness in the guppy
title_fullStr Using a robotic fish to investigate individual differences in social responsiveness in the guppy
title_full_unstemmed Using a robotic fish to investigate individual differences in social responsiveness in the guppy
title_short Using a robotic fish to investigate individual differences in social responsiveness in the guppy
title_sort using a robotic fish to investigate individual differences in social responsiveness in the guppy
topic Biology (Whole Organism)
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6124066/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30225087
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.181026
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