Colorful facial markings are associated with foraging rates and affiliative relationships in a wild group-living cichlid fish

Many animals use color to signal their quality and/or behavioral motivations. Colorful signals have been well studied in the contexts of competition and mate choice; however, the role of these signals in nonsexual, affiliative relationships is not as well understood. Here, we used wild social groups of the cichlid fish Neolamprologus pulcher to investigate whether the size of a brightly colored facial patch was related to 1) individual quality, …