Automated pulse discrimination of two freely-swimming weakly electric fish and analysis of their electrical behavior during a dominance contest

Abstract

Electric fishes modulate their electric organ discharges with a remarkable variability. Some patterns can be easily identified, such as pulse rate changes, offs and chirps, which are often associated with important behavioral contexts, including aggression, hiding and mating. However, these behaviors are only observed when at least two fish are freely interacting. Although their electrical pulses can be easily recorded by non-invasive techniques, discriminating the emitter of each pulse is challenging when physically similar fish are allowed to freely move and interact. Here we optimized a custom-made software recently designed to identify the emitter of pulses by using automated chirp detection, adaptive threshold for pulse detection and slightly changing how the recorded signals are integrated. With these optimizations, we performed a quantitative analysis of the statistical changes throughout the dominance contest with respect to Inter Pulse Intervals, Chirps and Offs dyads of freely moving Gymnotus carapo. In all dyads, chirps were signatures of subsequent submission, even when they occurred early in the contest. Although offs were observed in both dominant and submissive fish, they were substantially more frequent in submissive individuals, in agreement with the idea from previous studies that offs are electric cues of submission. In general, after the dominance is established the submissive fish significantly changes its average pulse rate, while the pulse rate of the dominant remained unchanged. Additionally, no chirps or offs were observed when two fish were manually kept in direct physical contact, suggesting that these electric behaviors are not automatic responses to physical contact.