Recent social environment affects colour-assortative shoaling in juvenile angelfish (Pterophyllum scalare)

Theory predicts that fish should show colour-assortative shoaling in order to avoid the oddity effect whereby individuals that differ in some feature from the group majority appear to incur increased risk of predation. It has also been shown that early experience plays an important role in affecting social preferences in some fish species. In this study, the importance of colour phenotype in promoting assortative shoaling and the role played by the recent social environment on its expression were investigated in juvenile angelfish, Pterophyllum scalare. Individuals of the uniformly black and golden colour morphs were housed in a group with conspecifics of like and unlike body colour to themselves, as well as in mixed-colour groups for 4 weeks. Subsequently, they were subjected to a binary choice to shoal with a group of conspecifics composed of unfamiliar fish of either a like or unlike colour phenotype to themselves. The response of the individuals to the colour attributes of the shoals was related to their recent social environment. Fish in like- and mixed-colour previous treatments showed a preferential association with like colour conspecifics. In contrast, the shoaling behaviour exhibited by fish previously maintained with a group of unlike-coloured conspecifics (cross-housed treatment) indicated no significant preference for any of the shoals. The results suggest that angelfish use body colouration as an intraspecific shoaling cue and that learning, in the form of recent familiarization with a specific colour phenotype of conspecifics, can affect colour-assortative shoaling preferences in this species. This learning component of the choice need not be restricted to early developmental stages.