Abstract
Gobius cruentatus emit sounds during agonistic interactions. In order to evaluate the effect of boat noise exposure on G. cruentatus territorial behaviour, we played a field-recorded diesel engine boat noise during aggressive encounters between an intruder and a resident fish in a laboratory-controlled tank. We tested two factors: role (resident vs. intruder) and condition (noisy vs. silent); the test animals underwent all the treatments in a round-robin design. Agonistic behavior of the residents was modified by boat noise: during the playback residents were more submissive and won less encounters than in the control (silent) condition. We suggest that sound production is an effective tool for territorial defense, since the impairment of acoustic communication due to the recreational boat noise diminished the ability of the resident to maintain its territory.
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Acknowledgments
This study was part of a project to monitor human-made noise in Marine Protected Areas supported by the Italian Ministry for Environment, Territory and Sea. We would like to thank Maurizio Spoto and the Miramare Natural Marine Reserve staff for technical assistance, Elena Pangaro for her support in data collection, Antonio Codarin for help in acoustic analyses, MPC Amorim for critical reading and valuable comments, and Valerie Lesk for English proofreading.
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Sebastianutto, L., Picciulin, M., Costantini, M. et al. How boat noise affects an ecologically crucial behaviour: the case of territoriality in Gobius cruentatus (Gobiidae). Environ Biol Fish 92, 207–215 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-011-9834-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-011-9834-y