Familiarity effects on fish behaviour are disrupted in shoals that contain also unfamiliar individuals

Abstract Research on several social fishes has revealed that shoals constituted by familiar individuals behave remarkably differently compared to shoals formed by unfamiliar individuals. However, whether these behavioural changes may arise also in shoals composed by a mixture of familiar and unfamiliar individuals, a situation that may commonly occur in nature, is not clear. Here, we observed the behaviour of Mediterranean killifish ( Aphanius fasciatus ) shoals that were composed by both familiar and unfamiliar individuals (i.e. individuals were familiar to each other in pairs) and compared it with shoals entirely made by either unfamiliar or familiar individuals. Shoals formed by familiar individuals took longer to emerge from a refuge and swam more cohesively compared to shoals formed by unfamiliar fish. Shoals formed by a mixture of familiar and unfamiliar individuals behaved as shoals formed by unfamiliar individuals. Moreover, mixed shoals did not segregate in pairs according to their familiarity. This study suggests that mixed shoals do not show the behavioural effects of familiarity. Significance statement Laboratory studies have compared the behaviour of shoals formed by familiar fish versus shoals formed by unfamiliar fish, finding notable advantages in the former ones, such as improved antipredator and foraging behaviour. However, comparing these two opposite shoal types may not provide information on the natural situation, because in nature, shoals often change composition. We investigated how shoals formed by a mixture of familiar and unfamiliar fish behaved. We analysed shoals’ preference for open environment versus covers and shoals’ swimming cohesion. Results showed that shoals formed by both familiar and unfamiliar individuals mostly behave like shoals entirely formed by unfamiliar individuals. This suggests that the advantages of social groups formed by familiar fish might be hardly seen in nature for species in which shoal composition changes frequently.