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Changes In Heart Rate Associated With Contest Outcome In Agonistic Encounters In Lobsters, Jesus Hernandez-Falcon, Alo Basu, Siddhartan Govindasamy, Edward Kravitz

Siddhartan Govindasamy

1. Agonistic contests between lobsters housed together in a confined space progress through encounters of increasing intensity until a dominance relationship is established. Once this relationship is established, losing animals continually retreat from the advances of winners. 2. These encounters are likely to consume much energy in both winning and losing animals. Therefore, one might expect involvement of many physiological systems before, during and after fights. Here, we report effects of agonistic encounters on cardiac frequency in winning and losing adult lobsters involved in dyadic interactions. 3. The results show that: (i) small but significant increases in heart rate are …