Evolution of social behavior in a resource-rich, structured environment: selection experiments with medaka (Oryzias latipes)

Abstract

Presents evidence that schooling, social tolerance, and agonistic behavior in medaka are altered as an indirect result of selection on growth in two environments that differed in the intensity of social interactions required to obtain access to food. Results are interpreted in terms of a hypothesized stimulus-response threshold level for agonistic responses to conspecifics. This threshold, which is altered by selection on growth, could provide a common causal (genetic) link between growth and the observed aspects of social behavior. The probability of no change in threshold appears to be low. -from Authors