Changing minds: Fish behavior and cognition in human-altered habitats
Restricted (Penn State Only)
- Author:
- Patton, B Wren
- Graduate Program:
- Ecology
- Degree:
- Doctor of Philosophy
- Document Type:
- Dissertation
- Date of Defense:
- October 05, 2023
- Committee Members:
- James Marden, Major Field Member
David Hughes, Co-Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Jason Kaye, Program Head/Chair
Paola Ferreri, Co-Chair & Dissertation Advisor
Sonia Cavigelli, Outside Unit & Field Member - Keywords:
- ocean acidification
fish
coral reef
behavior
Lemon Damselfish
Pomacentrus moluccensis
climate change
Atlantic Cod
Gadus morhua
tool use
cognitive ecology
behavioral ecology
resilience
enrichment - Abstract:
- Ecological and evolutionary context shape both cognitive capacity and behavioral responses in fish, as discussed in Chapter 1. That context provides a strong framework to make predictions about the needs and preferences of individuals. Atlantic Cod (Gadus morhua) at the Maritime Aquarium in Norwalk, CT provide an excellent example of this assertion in action in Chapter 2. Cod are a highly adaptable, behaviorally flexible species accustomed to a highly variable habitat. While the exhibit has in-tank habitat enrichment, it remained relatively unchanged since its creation in 2009. As a result, the main feature of the fish’s environment that changes is the presence or absence of aquarium visitors at the exhibit windows. Approximately one third of the cod in the exhibit have cataracts associated with aging or injury before being brought into the aquarium. Using visitor presence as the primary variable, we compared the behavior of sighted cod, and cod with cataracts in response to presence or absence of visitors at the window. Fish with cataracts showed no significant differences in behavior when visitors were present. By contrast, fish without cataracts spent significantly more time in front of the window and had more nonlinear swimming patterns when visitors were present, and showed no significant differences from the cataract fish when visitors were absent. Thus, using ecological context to drive a hypothesis about novelty-seeking behavior when fish were moved from a high-variability (wild) to low-variability (captive) environment was highly successful. Anthropogenic habitat change, in particular climate change, is an area where rapid change in context is the defining feature. Atmospheric CO2 exceeds the natural range seen in the last 650,000 years. Since the Industrial Revolution, average ocean pH has already dropped over 0.1 units in the process known as ocean acidification; a direct product of elevating atmospheric CO2. Understanding how and on what scale these changes will affect fish is crucial to any management and mitigation effort. However, despite critical consensus that context is the key to understand the impacts of climate change on the environment, crucial variables are often overlooked. Chapter 3 provides an analysis of the history of research into the behavioral response of fish to ocean acidification. While that history has been complicated with findings of fraud and highly contentious dialogue in the field, the overarching theme is a strong need to contextualize experimental design and consider the impact of frequently overlooked confounding variables. In Chapter 4, we observed the behavioral response of the Lemon Damselfish (Pomacentrus moluccensis) to stepwise, slowly increasing levels of CO2 over a 53-day period. Three trials were conducted: mirror aggression, coral shelter use, and response to a novel object. While an acclimation effect to elevated CO2 was not observed, we found an intersecting relationship between time in captivity, size of fish, and CO2 such that large and small fish frequently showed opposite patterns both to each other and in response to CO2 and time in captivity. Due to these intersecting effects, under the currently most commonly utilized experimental conditions of short time in captivity, high CO2 and without controlling for size of fish, the majority of significant effects found in response to CO2 would be erased. Overall, the magnitude of effects were smaller than many of those previously published, but nonetheless significant. A strong signal of individual laterality in response to a mirror image was found which was robust to CO2, time in captivity and size of fish. The model developed for activity in the Coral Shelter trial was used to replicate experimental conditions described in Clark et al (2020) and the results were highly comparable. Elucidating the impacts of time in captivity and size of fish therefore lend important insight into the highly variable results seen in the literature to date. This study, though it only examined one species, clearly demonstrated the importance of tracking and controlling for factors such as time in captivity and size of fish when examining behavioral response to a changing habitat. Small differences in responses between different contexts can result in dramatically different effects when applied to experimental extremities such as water acidification levels predicted to occur in 100 years. It will only be with careful examination of context-based evidence that we will successfully predict and manage for the changing conditions to come.