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Behavior, Diel Activities, and Stimuli That Elicit Sound Production and Reactions to Sounds in the Longspine Squirrelfish

1964; American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists; Volume: 1964; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/1441036

1938-5110

Howard E. Winn, Joseph A. Marshall, Brian A. Hazlett,

Fish Ecology and Management Studies

Staccatos are produced less frequently at night when the fish are most active in feeding than during the day when they hover over their rock crevices. Various fishes introduced to a population of squirrelfish demonstrated that constantly moving fish caused many staccatos to be produced. Under certain circumstances more staccatos were produced toward introduced alien species than toward squirrelfish. A type of mobbing behavior with the production of staccatos occurred. When 3 types of sounds were played out underwater, the following modifications in behavior were recorded: sometimes the fish jumped, they retreated into their crevices, they turned their heads toward the sound, and either during sound or after, the fish investigated the source. This did not occur with lobster sounds. The characteristic daily cycles of sound production of various fishes are discussed. The significance of the playback experiments is discussed particularly in relation to orientation to the source of sound. It is considered that fishes do orient to the source and the possibility of binaural localization should be considered more seriously as a possible mechanism. The grunt sounds of variable time intervals seem related primarily to aggressive behavior in territorial defense. The staccato is first accompanied by escape behavior, then a shift occurs to investigative behavior, and finally it is involved with a special mobbing behavior which is probably aggressive. The sounds in relation to the fish's behavior are quite complex and need further study. A large number of parallelisms occur between the way squirrelfishes utilize their sounds in a complex community and the way birds have organized acoustical signal systems.