Emotional responsiveness in fish from lines artificially selected for a high or low degree of laterality

Evidence showing that cerebral asymmetries exist in a wide range of animals has prompted investigation into the advantages and disadvantages of brain lateralization. In the teleost fish Girardinus falcatus individuals selected for a high degree of lateralization (LAT) performed better than those fish selected for reduced lateralization (NL) in several tasks, including schooling, foraging and spatial orientation. These findings were interpreted as evidence of hemispheric specialization allowing more efficient parallel processing and thus better cognitive performance under conditions that require multitasking, but the possibility that the results may simply reflect line differences in behavioral/physiological coping styles (i.e. in their emotional responsiveness during the tests) could not be ruled out. To test the hypothesis that NL and LAT fish differ in coping style, the present study examined differences in response in these lines to a novel situation in four different conditions. NL and LAT fish did not differ in a behavioral measure of emotional response: their readiness to explore a new environment. After being isolated in a tight space they showed a similar increase in opercular beating rates, suggesting that their physiological response to an acute stressor was comparable. The overall tendency to remain close to a shoalmate after being moved to an unfamiliar place was similar in the two groups but a significant difference was found in the temporal pattern; LAT fish swam closer than NL to their mirror image in the initial stages but this difference was later reversed. NL and LAT males placed in a new, unfamiliar environment did not differ in the number of sexual acts performed but LAT males resumed sexual behavior earlier signifying that cerebral lateralization has some influence on the trade-off between predator surveillance and mating behavior. Although this study found some differences between NL and LAT lines in their response to novelty, present evidence does not seem sufficient to justify the rejection of the hypothesis that the better scores in complex tasks shown by LAT fish in previous studies were primarily due to a cognitive advantage associated with cerebral specialization.