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Singing above the chorus: cooperative Princess cichlid fish (Neolamprologus pulcher) has high pitch

  • ADVANCES IN CICHLID RESEARCH II
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Abstract

Teleost fishes not only communicate with well-known visual cues, but also olfactory and acoustic signals. Communicating with sound has advantages, as acoustic signals propagate fast, omnidirectionally, around obstacles and over long distances. Heterogeneous environments might favour multimodal communication, especially in socially complex species, as the combination of modalities’ strengths helps overcome their individual limitations. Fishes of the ecologically and morphologically diverse family Cichlidae are known to be vocal. Here we investigated sound production in the socially complex Princess cichlid Neolamprologus pulcher from Lake Tanganyika in East Africa. We show that wild and captive N. pulcher produce only short-duration, broadband high-frequency sounds (mean: 12 kHz), when stimulated by mirror images. The evolutionary reasons for this “low frequency silencing” are still unclear. In laboratory experiments, N. pulcher produced distinct two-pulsed calls mostly, but not exclusively, associated with agonistic displays. Princess cichlids produce these high-frequency sounds both in combination with and independent from visual displays, suggesting that sounds are not a by-product of behavioural displays. Further studies on the hearing abilities of N. pulcher are needed to clarify whether the high-frequency sounds are used in intra- or inter-specific communication.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Lia Albergati and Benjamin Küng for assistance in the field and Miguel Vences for use of the recording equipment. We are grateful to Sigal Balshine, Katarzyna Pisanski and Susan E. Marsh-Rollo for sharing information on their raw data with us. This Project was funded by a travel Grant from the University of Basel to RKS, by Grants from the European Research Council (ERC; StG “CICHLID ~ X”) and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF) to WS, and by the “University of Basel Excellence Scholarships for Young Researchers” and “Novartis Excellence Scholarships for Life Sciences” to HFG.

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  1. Rachel K. Spinks

    Present address: ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University, Townsville, QLD, 4811, Australia

  2. Moritz Muschick

    Present address: Department of Fish Ecology & Evolution, EAWAG Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Biogeochemistry, 6047, Kastanienbaum, Switzerland

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Zoological Institute, University of Basel, Vesalgasse 1, 4051, Basel, Switzerland

    Rachel K. Spinks, Moritz Muschick, Walter Salzburger & Hugo F. Gante

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  1. Rachel K. Spinks
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Correspondence to Hugo F. Gante.

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Guest editors: S. Koblmüller, R. C. Albertson, M. J. Genner, K. M. Sefc & T. Takahashi / Advances in Cichlid Research II: Behavior, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

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Additional file 1

Audio file. Two double-pulsed calls of a male Neolamprologus pulcher, produced during an aggressive lateral display in the laboratory experiments. The first double-pulsed call corresponds to Fig. 2 (WAV 618 kb)

Additional file 2

Audio file. One double-pulsed call of a female Neolamprologus pulcher, produced during submissive posture in the lab experiments. (WAV 191 kb)

Additional file 3

Audio file. One double-pulsed call of a male Neolamprologus pulcher, produced without behavioural display (motionless) in the lab experiments. (WAV 202 kb)

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Spinks, R.K., Muschick, M., Salzburger, W. et al. Singing above the chorus: cooperative Princess cichlid fish (Neolamprologus pulcher) has high pitch. Hydrobiologia 791, 115–125 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-016-2921-5

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