GROUP DECISION-MAKING IN DIFFERENT POPULATION SIZE OF CICHLIDS (CHINDONGO DEMASONI) DURING ESCAPE

Group decision-making plays a crucial role in fish anti-predation. The ability to utilize landmarks may be closely related to group decision-making choices during anti-predation in fish. In this study, the cichlid (Chindongo demasoni) was selected as the study model. A 6-arm radial maze was set up as an arena, consisting of a shelter arm (with landmark, baffle, and weed as shelter), a misleading arm (with only a baffle), and four normal arms. We examined group decision-making in shoals of different sizes (consisting of 3, 6, and 9 fish) under both natural and stress conditions after a short period of establishing contact with landmarks and shelter. Parameters such as the proportion of first-selected arms and the time taken to first reach each arm were used as evaluation indices. Under natural conditions, the first-selected arm was evenly distributed among the options. However, under stress conditions, following a brief period of spatial exploration, the proportion of fish selecting the shelter arm first increased significantly across all group sizes, and the time taken to reach each arm decreased significantly. As group size increased, the proportion of fish selecting the shelter arm first decreased under stress conditions, and the dwell time in the shelter arm decreased under both conditions, suggesting a change in their anti-predator strategies. Our results suggest that Cichlid can utilize collected landmark cues to establish contact with shelter within a short period and can accurately and quickly locateshelter when encountering a predator stimulus. Additionally, the accuracy of group decision-making under simulated predation stimuli was found to decrease with increasing group size.