Social Regulation of Gene Expression in the African Cichlid Fish Astatotilapia burtoni

52 Animals must interact with others and their environment to survive and reproduce. Thus, a fundamental challenge in biology is to understand how animals acquire, evaluate, and then translate information from their environment into adaptive physiological and behavioral changes. Social interactions in particular can profoundly influence an individual’s behavior and physiology, which is often mediated by a diverse array of cellular and molecular mechanisms. These links between social information and molecular plasticity ultimately shape the evolution of a species. It is well established that the brain controls the expression of behaviors, but how might an animal’s behavior or perception of its social and physical environment sculpt its brain? To address this and related questions requires model systems that allow controlled manipulation of the social environment in naturalistic or seminaturalistic settings. Furthermore, with recent advances in molecular biological techniques, it is also advantageous to conduct studies of social behavior in a model system in which the genome sequence is known. Genomic resources allow investigators to use a combination of approaches, including candidate gene studies and large-scale technologies (e.g., transcriptomics, proteomics, metabolomics, epigenomics), to identify suites of genes that may be associated with particular behavioral patterns, thus providing insight into the molecular basis and evolution of social behaviors. What is social behavior? For the purpose of this chapter, we define social behavior as interactions among members of the same species that influence immediate or future behaviors (Robinson, Fernald, & Clayton, 2008). This includes, but is not limited to, behaviors such as aggression, courtship, and Abstract