Burt's Blog

Hey guys, Tyrone here! I’m feeling down lately because I’ve been dealing with bullying a lot, especially from Burt. So, I’ve been trying to figure out how I should act when he inevitably decides to be mean to me again. Fortunately, the scientists in the lab care about my behavior and want to figure out what makes a fish susceptible or resilient to bullies like Burt! To cheer myself up, today I want to tell you all about the fun way the scientists study my behavior after repeatedly being bullied in a resident-intruder experiment (if you don’t remember the details check out my previous blog posts about this!). The scientists start with videos of these experiments to quantify our behavior. They specifically want to see how the intruder (like me, Tyrone) reacts to aggression from the resident (like Burt). By using a cool program called BORIS (which stands for B ehavioral O bservation R esearch I nteractive S oftware) they are able to see just how often and for how long we display certa...

Now that you know we also use pee and olfactory signals to communicate with each other, I want to tell you about another experiment designed to test how the neurons in our brain work to understand these smells.  The scientists put these little needles called electrodes in specific regions of our brain, and then pass water that contains different types of smells (or odors) over our noses to see how our brain responds.  When the neuron they’re recording from gets important information from our olfactory epithelium, it fires what’s called an ‘action potential’ (this is caused by ions like sodium and potassium crossing the cell membrane through channels). The researchers can then compare this firing activity after application of these different smells to determine which ones might be most important to us! In the first experiments, they’re doing these recordings in us males.  Right now, I’m a dominant male, meaning that I successfully defend my territory, mate with the ladies,...

Hey guys! It’s Burt again back with more fun science for you to explore. Last time I told you a little about smell and how it helps me communicate with Toni and other fish in my environment. We saw how the delivery and reception of chemical odorants dissolved in the water are important in mediating social interactions. Just as it’s important for me to communicate with Toni and other fish, it’s also important that systems throughout my body are able to communicate between each other, particularly the immune and nervous systems. Just like you, my brain allows me to take in information from my environment, process it, and produce an appropriate response. Although this process takes a lot of energy, I’m able to do this fairly well, which is great because I need to perform a variety of behaviors like finding food, dancing for the ladies, defending my territory, and protecting myself from predators. But recently, I’ve been more concerned with how well I’ll be able to perform these basic func...

Hi there! I just got back from sunny California where I attended the Society for Behavioral Neuroendocrinology (SBN) meeting! There was a lot of great research and I had a great time. I was especially excited to learn about some of the research being presented about me and my family. Check out a quick synopsis about the cichlid research that was presented at SBN 2017. JULIE BUTLER : SOCIAL STATUS AND BEHAVIORAL CONTEXT REGULATE EXPRESSION AND ACTIVATION OF TACHYKININ3A NEURONS IN THE BRAIN OF A SOCIAL AFRICAN CICHLID FISH Reproduction is really important. Neurons in my brain make sure that my reproductive system stays in tip-top shape. There’s this gene called tachykinin3 that helps regulate reproduction in mammals (like dogs, cats, and even humans!), but we don’t really know what it does in fish. Julie found that these neurons are located throughout my brain, not just in the one place that’s been so well studied in mammals. She also found that dominant males, like me, have more of th...