Ecology Colloquium Series - Watching the Watchers: How ecology contributes to maintaining fish in captivity
December 7, 2016 @ 12:20 pm
to 01:10 pm
B. Wren Patton, Penn State
301D Life Sciences
Event Website
Environmental enrichment is a primary husbandry tool used in zoos to successfully combat captivity-induced abnormal behavior and physiology of animals. However, despite the enormous breadth of physiological and cognitive variation among fishes, little attention has been paid to the impact of environmental enrichment for fish in aquaria. _Previous research has showed that species-appropriate enrichment and variability in fish housing results in a positive impact on both stress response and cognitive measures. The public Maritime Aquarium at Norwalk therefore invited the study of their cod (Gadus morhua) display to examine measures of behavior pre- and post- the introduction of environmental novelty and enrichment. In this first experiment, we examined the a priori behavior of the fish. As the only variability in their environment is the change in visitor presence outside the tank windows, we observed fish behavior in response to visitor presence. Approximately one-third of the fish had cataracts, and were therefore unable to see visitors outside of the window. Cod without cataracts were found to both spend significantly longer in the frame of the window, as well as alter swimming patterns to include loops and other non-linear behavior when visitors were present, while cod with cataracts showed no significant change with visitor presence.
Contact
Dr. David Eissenstat
dme9@psu.edu