Description
- Abstract:
- Male cuttlefish compete for females with a repertoire of visually dramatic behaviors. Laboratory experiments have explored this system in Sepia officinalis but corroborative field data have eluded collection attempts by many researchers. While SCUBA diving in Turkey, we fortuitously filmed an intense sequence of consort/intruder behaviors in which the consort lost then regained his female mate from the intruder. These agonistic bouts escalated in stages, leading to fast dramatic expression of the elaborate Intense Zebra Display and culminating in biting and inking as the intruder male attempted a forced copulation of the female. When analyzed in the context of game theory, the patterns of fighting behavior were more consistent with mutual assessment than self assessment of fighting ability. Additional observations of these behaviors in nature are needed to conclusively determine which models best represent conflict resolution, but our field observations agree with laboratory findings and provide a valuable perspective.
- Notes:
- Funded by National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship (to JJ Allen); ONR grant #N0001406-1-0202 and support from the Sholley Foundation to Roger Hanlon, PhD
- Recorded afternoon of May 2, 2011
Access Conditions
- Use and Reproduction
-
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License
Citation
Akkaynak, Derya, and Allen, Justine J.,
"Dramatic fighting by male cuttlefish for a female mate"
(2011).
Brown University Open Data Collection.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://doi.org/10.7301/Z0PR7SX4
Relations
Has Parts:
-
Dramatic fighting by male cuttlefish to obtain a female mate: supplementary data
- Type: Archive
- Order: 1
-
Dramatic fighting by male cuttlefish to obtain a female mate: supplementary data
- Type: Archive
- Order: 2
-
Scoring data for "Dramatic fighting by male cuttlefish to obtain a female mate"
- Type: Xlsx
- Order: 4
Collection:
-
Brown University Open Data Collection
This collection contains open and public access data sets created by Brown University faculty and student researchers. Increasingly, publishers and funders are requiring that protocols, data sets, documentation and code underlying publications be retained and preserved in repositories, their locations …...