Astatotilapia burtoni has been used as a model organism to study the behaviors and physical systems of cichlids, including their development and embryogenesis.

[6] To expand on reversibility, if a territorial male is placed with an individual that is significantly larger in size, it will then rapidly socially transform into the non-territorial type.

[7] In regards to the other social transition, when a non-territorial male becomes the territorial type, it will almost immediately exhibit aggressive behavior and an eyebar,[8] while the physiological changes will follow in about one week.

Females use a complex integration of cues in order to make their mate preferences, which may be from genetic factors, learned behaviors, or hormone levels.

[6] Maternal mouthbrooding is recognized to affect hormones and reproductive cycles for the female cichlids, but the effects as a result of neural processing and food deprivation are not known.

[19] Many animals use multimodal communication, having multiple sensory modalities at their disposal for reproductive interactions, and the Astatotilapia burtoni has been used as a model to study the production of the wide variety sexual signal types.

A. burtoni incorporate multiple sensory systems, including chemosensory, visual, acoustic, to be able to socially interact in their complex manner.

This reliance on non-visual sensory information in order to coordinate complex social behaviors indicates that acoustic signaling is important for the A. burtoni.

Thus, more efforts have been made to understand how the females perform sexual selection by closely examining the signaling systems and how they relate to the neural processing in the fish to result in such behaviors.

[6] A particular study showed that dominant males will issue auditory signals in order to court females, and that these courtship sounds are similar to those that they themselves could perceive.