Conflict between background matching and social signalling in a colour-changing freshwater fish

Abstract

The ability to change coloration allows animals to modify their patterning to suit a specific function. Many freshwater fishes, for example, can appear cryptic by altering the dispersion of melanin pigment in the skin to match the visual background. However, melanin-based pigments are also used to signal dominance among competing males thus colour change for background matching may conflict with colour change for social status signalling. We used a colour-changing freshwater fish to investigate whether colour change for background matching influenced aggressive interactions between rival males.