This past week the manuscript that was the product of an REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) student I had the opportunity to mentor at Ohio State’s Stone Laboratory was published online in Behavioural Processes. Alex’s project focused on how dominance relationships form between round goby of varying sizes. It’s pretty well established in many species (including round goby) that larger individuals are socially dominant to smaller individuals. This means larger individuals generally have greater resource holding potential – whether that resource is food, shelter, or mates.
Alex predicted that this trend would hold true (its already been established in a number of studies on round goby), but was interested in how these relationships are established in more complex social settings. Do dominance relationships form between larger individuals before smaller individuals? Does the actual size difference between individuals influence how quickly the relationship is resolved? Do males and females differ in how they resolve conflict over dominance?
After 5 weeks of intense work while at Stone Lab, Alex set up many groups of three individuals of the same sex that varied in relative size. He then collected an impressive amount of data on these fish and groups, scored behavioral videos, and analyzed the results. He presented his preliminary findings at the end of the 5 week session, and after subsequent analysis of the data the manuscript is finally out!
Alex found that larger individuals establish dominance over smaller individuals quickly, and that smaller individuals in groups did not differ in their dominance score. Interestingly, there was no difference between males in females in their behavioral interactions.
Alex did a phenomenal job carrying out this experiment and completing this paper, great work!
Read the full article here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0376635718304224
The Ligocki Lab 