ABS 2023
Search
Corydoras catfish as a model system to study how social selection drives the evolution of social species
Riva J Riley. University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland (MD), United States

Social behavior conveys many advantages to social animals, including improved foraging and protection, but it also presents the challenge of social coordination. To coordinate with others, social animals must navigate their social environments, which are determined by the behavior and characteristics of their groupmates. In social species, the social environment poses additional evolutionary pressures, constituting a suite of selection pressures termed social selection. Social selection can impose intense selection pressures on social animals and has not received sufficient consideration within evolutionary theory. Social selection can even trigger a runaway process that drives the evolution of elaborate social behaviors in a way analogous to how sexual selection drives elaborate courtship behaviors. I present a novel model system, Corydoras catfish, that exhibit a discrete, inter-individual social interaction behavior I termed nudging, and hold great potential for studying social selection. I will present the results from a suite of Corydoras experiments my team has performed that shed light on the impact of social selection on behavioral evolution.

Spanish Version

Can provide at a later date