Social learning of foraging sites and escape routes in wild Trinidadian guppies

• Published in: Animal behaviour Vol. 66; no. 4; pp. 729 - 739
• Main Authors: Reader, Simon M., Kendal, Jeremy R., Laland, Kevin N.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Kent Elsevier Ltd 01.10.2003; Elsevier; Harcourt Brace Jovanovich Ltd
• Subjects: Agnatha and pisces; Animal behavior; Animal cognition; Animal ethology; Biological and medical sciences; Experiments; Fish; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Poecilia reticulata; Predation; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Rivers; Vertebrata; Central America; Trinidad and Tobago; America; West Indies; Trinidad and Tobago, Trinidad; Feeding behavior; Social learning; Information; Foraging behavior; Freshwater environment; Vertebrata; Acquisition process; Site selection; Escape behavior; Sharing; Pisces; Poecilia reticulata; Antipredator behavior; Field study
• ISSN: 0003-3472; 1095-8282
• DOI: 10.1006/anbe.2003.2252

We describe two field experiments with wild guppies, Poecilia reticulata, in Trinidad that demonstrated that guppies can acquire foraging and predator escape-response information from conspecifics. In the foraging experiment, subjects were presented with two distinctly marked feeders in their home rivers. One feeder contained a conspecific shoal in a transparent container. Guppies preferred to enter the feeder containing this artificial shoal over the other feeder. In a test phase, the artificial shoal was removed and the feeders replaced at the testing site after a 5-min delay. More guppies entered the feeder that had contained the artificial shoal over the other feeder, a difference that can be explained only by the fish learning the characteristics or location of the feeder during the training phase. We suggest that subjects acquired a foraging patch preference through a propensity to approach feeding conspecifics, a local enhancement process. In the predator escape-response experiment, naıve ‘observer’ guppies could avoid an approaching trawl net by escaping through either a hole to which ‘demonstrator’ guppies had been trained or through an alternative hole. When the demonstrators were present, the naıve observers escaped more often and more rapidly by the demonstrated route than the alternative route. When the demonstrators were removed, observers maintained a route preference according to the training of their demonstrators, which suggests that the observers had learned an escape route through following or observing their more knowledgeable conspecifics. Thus, both experiments reveal that guppies can socially learn in the wild. Copyright 2003 Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour.