INDIVIDUAL RECOGNITION IN A COOPERATIVELY BREEDING CICHLID - EVIDENCEFROM VIDEO PLAYBACK EXPERIMENTS

Most theories of social behaviour and cooperation assume that animals can recognise other individuals, but this is rarely tested. Using Neol amprologus brichardi, a cooperatively breeding cichlid fish, we monito red behavioural responses to (1) real fish versus video images of fish ; (2) mate versus neighbour and (3) video images of mate versus video image of neighbour. All tests were controlled for size and sex. Fish r eacted appropriately to the playbacks, although responses to videos we re not as strong as to real fish. Both males and females fought agains t the images of stranger and neighbour fish and they courted images of mates. These results confirm that the cooperatively breeding fish, Ne olamprologus brichardi, recognises individuals based on vision and tha t video playbacks contain sufficient information to facilitate recogni tion.