Tamario, Carl
- Department of Wildlife, Fish and Environmental Studies, Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
Abstract
Human activities increase turbidity in aquatic environments worldwide, which often affects fish behaviour. However, predicting how species react to higher turbidity remains difficult, as responses vary depending on the species, their ecology and the ecosystem. It is thus important to improve our understanding of the responses of fishes living in ecosystems experiencing recent increases in turbidity, especially those with unique species compositions where biodiversity is most vulnerable. One such ecosystem is Lake Tanganyika in East Africa, which is home to a diverse fish community with a high degree of endemism. In this study, we conducted a laboratory experiment with the territorial cichlid, Neolamprologus pulcher, which is endemic to Lake Tanganyika, to investigate the effects of increased turbidity on territorial and exploratory behaviour. We found that moderate increases in turbidity led to reduced territory defence, decreased exploration and increased time spent in shelters. Given that these fish live in large colonies, feed on planktonic particles in the water column and defend their territory against conspecific and heterospecific intruders, these behavioural changes are likely to have substantial implications for their social structure and reproduction in their native environments. Our study raises important questions about whether these effects will persist in the long term as human activities are likely to continue to increase turbidity in the lake over the coming decades and whether the responses to turbidity affect the community composition of fishes in Lake Tanganyika. (c) 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/).
Keywords
aggression; anthropogenic impact; behavioural plasticity; ecological adaptation; environmental stressor; habitat alteration; social dynamics; species resilience; territorial cichlid
Published in
Animal Behaviour
2025, volume: 226, article number: 123243
Publisher: ACADEMIC PRESS LTD- ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
SLU Authors
UKÄ Subject classification
Fish and Aquacultural Science
Ecology
Publication identifier
- DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2025.123243
Permanent link to this page (URI)
https://res.slu.se/id/publ/143048