DOI: 10.5061/dryad.4b8gtht8s
title: Structural manipulations of a shelter resource reveal underlying preference functions in a shell-dwelling cichlid fish

description: Many animals can modify the environments in which they live, thereby
 changing the selection pressures they experience. A common example of such
 niche-construction is the use, creation, or modification of environmental
 resources for use as nests or shelters. Because these resources often have
 correlated structural elements, it can be difficult to disentangle the
 relative contribution of these elements to resource choice, and the
 preference functions underlying niche-construction behaviour remain
 hidden. Here, we present an experimental paradigm that uses 3D-scanning,
 -modelling, and -printing to create replicas of structures that differ
 with respect to key structural attributes. We show that a
 niche-constructing, shell-dwelling cichlid fish, Neolamprologus
 multifasciatus, has strong open-ended preference functions for exaggerated
 shell replicas. Fish preferred shells that were fully intact and either
 enlarged, lengthened, or had widened apertures. Shell intactness was the
 most important structural attribute, followed by shell length, then
 aperture width. We disentangle the relative roles of different shell
 attributes, which are tightly correlated in the wild, but nevertheless
 differentially influence shelter choice and therefore niche construction
 in this species. We highlight the broad utility of our approach when
 compared to more traditional methods (e.g. two-choice tasks) for studying
 animal decision-making in a range of contexts.
description: This dataset was collected according to the methods detailed in
 Bose et al. "Structural manipulations of a shelter resource reveal
 underlying preference functions in a shell-dwelling cichlid fish". In
 brief, <i>Neothauma tanganyicense</i> snail shells were
 micro-CT scanned, modelled, and 3D printed to create shell replicas. In
 each replica, we experimentally manipulated one structural attribute,
 either enlarging it or diminishing it, independently of other structural
 attributes. We then presented these shell replicas
 to <i>Neolamprologus multifasciatus </i>individuals in a
 series of shell choice tasks. We analyzed the data using a preference
 function approach. See Methods section and Supplementary Materials for
 more details.
description: There are two data files.
 1. Shell_preferences.csv contains all the behavioural results
 from the choice tasks wherein shell replicas were presented to individual
 fish. First several columns give information on the individual fish
 participants, the next several columns given summary information about the
 individual fish's preference functions (i.e. preference function
 traits), and the last few columns given information on how many trials the
 fish participated in. Note that this dataframe also includes the simulated
 trials needed to generate 'random' preference function
 traits. 2. Shell_choice_chirality.csv contains the
 behavioural results from the shell chirality choice tasks. The first few
 columns given information on the individual fish participants, while the
 final columns give their actual shell choices.