Honors Theses
Date of Award
5-9-2019
Document Type
Undergraduate Thesis
Department
Biology
First Advisor
Glenn R. Parsons
Relational Format
Dissertation/Thesis
Abstract
Environmental changes during a storm can affect animal behavior; for example, tagged sharks leave shallow waters during tropical storms. While changes in shark behavior during storm passage have been documented, there have been no experimental tests to determine which environmental parameters are responsible. In this study, we experimentally manipulated two environmental cues: barometric pressure, and thunder sounds, to determine their effect on whitespotted bamboo sharks, Chiloscyllium plagiosum, and golden shiners, Notemigonus crysoleucas. Elasmobranchs do not have a swim bladder to detect pressure change; therefore, we used golden shiners to compare the reaction of a fish with a swim bladder. The pressure was decreased by 1.52 cmHg from a high atmospheric pressure (75.69 cmHg – 76. 35 cmHg) over three hours, and the lowest pressure (1.52 cmHg from the atmospheric pressure) was held for an hour while activity was recorded. There was no difference between the activity during the treatment of manipulated pressure and treatment of constant pressure in C. plagiosum. When observing time interval of decreasing pressure (Hours 0 to 3), N. crysoleucas was more active when the pressure was decreased than when pressure was not decreased. When observing the activity of the golden shiners, we found that the golden shiners were less active as the pressure continued to decrease. C. plagiosum were also exposed to recorded thunder sounds, and a control of no thunder sounds. We documented the activity during each trial. There was no significant difference in the activity of C. plagiosum between the treatment of thunder sounds and the treatment of no thunder sounds. The daily fluctuations of activity may have been a confounding variable to the activity resulting from the treatment. While many of these results are preliminary, the results are an interesting insight on how these two species, white spotted bamboo sharks and golden shiners, possibly react to various isolated cues present in a storm.
Recommended Citation
Healy, Jordan A., "The Effect of Simulated Storm Passage on the Behavior of Whitespotted Bamboo Sharks, Chiloscyllium Plagiosum and Golden Shiners, Notemigonus Chrysoleucas" (2019). Honors Theses. 1113.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis/1113
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