Discussion
Unlike earlier work in which guppies that participated in an inspection trial
preferred to associate with others that inspected most closely (Dugatkin & Alfieri
1991), we found that observer guppies displayed no inspection-based preferences.
Male observer guppies did not prefer to associate with the inspecting fish in the
control treatment, nor did they prefer the closer of the two inspectors in the
sequential or social treatments. Furthermore, the observers did not show a
preference for either the individual they had seen first or last in the two tests in
which they saw the inspectors sequentially (control and sequential treatments). In
the social treatment, however, observers often failed to exhibit a preference when
the average distance between inspectors was small (<4 cm), suggesting that
subjects in our trials were gathering information about the relative cooperative
tendencies of putative inspectors (but not necessarily using this information to
demonstrate a preference). If the guppies were gleaning no information by
observing an inspection sortie, no preference data should have been evenly
distributed throughout trials.
การแปล กรุณารอสักครู่..