Dominance hierarchies can reduce conflict within social groups and agonistic signals can help to establish and maintain these hierarchies. Behaviours produced by subordinates in response to aggression are often assumed to function as signals of submission, however, these behaviours may serve other purposes, for example, defence or escape. For a behaviour to act as a submission signal, the receiver must respond by reducing their likelihood of further aggression towards the signaller. In the current study, we examine the receiver response to a putative signal of submission, the head up display, within established social groups of the cooperatively breeding fish, the daffodil cichlid (Neolamprologus pulcher). We found that when subordinate signallers produce the head up display in response to aggression from the breeder male, he exhibited a longer latency to behave aggressively towards that individual again. We also report that head up displays are rarely produced without being elicited by aggression, and the number of head up displays correlates with the amount of aggression received. Our results demonstrate that the head up display is used as a signal of submission in the daffodil cichlid and provide insight into intragroup communication in an emerging model system for the study of social behaviour.

中文翻译：

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平视显示器是群居水仙慈鲷的提交信号

支配等级可以减少社会群体内部的冲突，而对抗性信号可以帮助建立和维护这些等级。下属为应对侵略而产生的行为通常被认为是作为屈服的信号，然而，这些行为可能用于其他目的，例如防御或逃避。对于作为提交信号的行为，接收者必须通过减少他们进一步攻击信号者的可能性来做出回应。在当前的研究中，我们检查了在合作繁殖的鱼水仙丽鱼 (Neolamprologus pulcher) 的既定社会群体中，接收者对假定的提交信号（抬头显示）的反应。我们发现，当下属的信号员产生抬头显示以响应饲养员雄性的攻击时，他表现出更长的潜伏期，再次对那个人表现出侵略性。我们还报告说，平视显示器很少会在没有受到攻击的情况下产生，并且平视显示器的数量与收到的攻击数量相关。我们的结果表明，平视显示器被用作水仙慈鲷的提交信号，并为研究社会行为的新兴模型系统中的群内交流提供了洞察力。