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Reflective environment heightens crayfish aggressive and fearful behaviors
Journal article   Open access   Peer reviewed

Reflective environment heightens crayfish aggressive and fearful behaviors

Stephanie M Rocca, Danielle N Saldana, Merve Addemir, Julianna A Koenig, Bin Z He, Olga L Miakotina and Daniel F Eberl
microPublication biology, Vol.2024(5)
05/24/2024
DOI: 10.17912/micropub.biology.001184
PMCID: PMC11161833
PMID: 38854633
url
https://doi.org/10.17912/micropub.biology.001184View
Published (Version of record) Open Access

Abstract

Animals typically respond to their reflection as a conspecific and will respond as if the reflection were another animal that they could interact with, either fearfully or aggressively. We investigated how a modified reflective environment of a standard glass aquarium affects the aggressive and fearful behaviors of the crayfish Orconectes virilis, based on pre-determined behavior criteria. We found that the crayfish were both increasingly aggressive and slightly fearful in the reflective environment compared to minimal behavioral changes in the control non-reflective environment. Thus, our findings support that crayfish recognize their mirror image as a conspecific.

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