RUI: Social Information Use and Communication in Aquatic Embryos

Animals laid as eggs in nests may obtain information during embryonic development about the environment that they are likely to experience after hatching. This ability to learn during the egg stage is thought to be beneficial because it prepares individuals to respond to resources and risks and can improve survival. Although we know that many aquatic organisms, including fish and amphibians, can learn during the egg stage, we do not fully understand how they learn.

Previous research has shown that aquatic embryos can detect and learn from visual and chemical cues in the water around them and directly learn from those cues. However, little is known about how the presence of neighbors in the nest contributes to learning during the egg stage. Given the proximity of eggs to one another in a nest, embryos also have the potential to gain information about the environment by paying attention to the behavior of other embryos (i.e., learning through social mechanisms).

This project will use a common, freshwater fish species, the fathead minnow, to investigate whether and how embryos learn about locally abundant predators during the egg stage from other individuals in the nest, and to understand how this information is transferred among egg-bound individuals. These data will provide new insight into the development of behavior and communication at a critical early life stage.

The PI will also collaborate with science education faculty and an interdisciplinary team of undergraduates to develop and deliver education materials for K-12 students (via a Junior Scientist education program) and conduct outreach to the local community with a focus on evolutionary biology, biodiversity, and the process of scientific inquiry.

The embryonic stage is a critical window of development and embryos are highly sensitive to environmental cues in a variety of modalities. During the egg stage, individuals may obtain information about the environment directly (via asocial learning mechanisms) or by observing the behavior of conspecifics (social learning mechanisms), or via a combination of the two.

Although previous research has shown that embryos of various oviparous aquatic taxa are sensitive to environmental cues that increase fitness after hatching, we know very little about embryonic social information use and learning in lower aquatic vertebrates. In addition, few studies have explicitly tested hypotheses related to learning in aquatic embryos prior to hatching, and thus numerous questions remain about the development and mechanisms of learning at this key stage of ontogeny.

This project will test multiple, non-mutually exclusive hypotheses of social learning and information transfer to determine when learned behaviors are first expressed in a common, oviparous freshwater fish species, Pimephales promelas, and how and from whom do embryos learn? The results will also provide insight into how embryos perceive and transmit conspecific sensory information.

In addition to advancing our understanding of the evolution and development of behavior, learning, social cognition, communication and sensory ecology, these data may also promote new insight in other areas of behavioral ecology, including predator-prey interactions and mate choice.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.