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Food searching behaviour in adult Atlantic cod Gadus morhua during acoustic training: social learning and leadership within a school
Author(s) -
Björnsson Björn,
Karlsson Hjalti,
Macrander Andreas
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
journal of fish biology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.672
H-Index - 115
eISSN - 1095-8649
pISSN - 0022-1112
DOI - 10.1111/jfb.13783
Subject(s) - gadus , fishery , fishing , atlantic cod , training (meteorology) , biology , fish <actinopterygii> , pollock , ecology , zoology , meteorology , geography
Food searching behaviour in a group of individually tagged 1–5 kg Atlantic cod Gadus morhua was studied in a set of three experiments in a sea cage with two underwater platforms, where restricted amounts of food was delivered several times per day during an acoustic training period. It took c. 1 week to train 20 naïve cod to associate low frequency (250 Hz) sound with food, whereas the training time was reduced to less than 2 days when 19 naïve G. morhua were accompanied with one trained fish. The fish formed a school that cruised between the platforms in search of food. Usually, there was one leader in the school, a fish that swam faster, arrived first at the platforms and visited the platforms more frequently than other members of the school. The leader spent more energy on swimming but also received more food and grew faster than the rest of the fish. At the start of the experiments, the leaders were not larger than the average fish but always among the leanest ones in the group. The study reveals how social learning can facilitate the acoustic training in adult G. morhua , information that may be useful in finding ways to aggregate valuable fish species for environmentally friendly fishing and ranching.