Seeing and smelling mates: multimodal integration and visual gating of chemical cues in female mate-location behavior in the prawn Macrobrachium rosenbergii

Abstract

Multimodal communication plays a central role in animal behavior, particularly when individuals must integrate information from different sensory channels to make rapid decisions. In aquatic environments, chemical and visual cues differ markedly in their spatial and temporal properties, such that chemical signals may be constrained by limited spatial resolution and temporal instability, potentially requiring visual information to reliably guide social decisions. In decapod crustaceans, both cue types are known to mediate reproduction, yet their relative contribution to mate-location behavior remains unclear. Here, we tested how visual and chemical cues from males influence mate-location behavior in females of the prawn Macrobrachium rosenbergii. Females were placed in a central arena and exposed to four stimulus configurations combining visual cues (a life-size photograph of a male or a control background) and chemical cues (water from an aquarium with or without a male). Attraction was quantified as the time spent in each half of the arena. Females showed no directional preference when exposed to chemical cues alone or when visual and chemical cues were spatially incongruent. In contrast, females spent significantly more time near male-associated stimuli only when visual and chemical cues were spatially congruent. These results indicate that mate-location behavior in this species depends on multimodal integration with a strong contextual dependence on visual information, which appears to gate the effectiveness of chemical cues. Spatially congruent multimodal signals are therefore necessary to guide orientation during mate search, suggesting that disruption of visual or chemical information in aquaculture systems may impair mating efficiency.