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Quantity discrimination in parental fish: female convict cichlid discriminate fry shoals of different sizes

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Abstract

Numerical abilities have been found to be adaptive in different contexts, including mating, foraging, fighting assessment and antipredator strategies. In species with parental care, another potential advantage is the possibility to adjust parental behavior in relation to the numerosity of the progeny. The finding that many fish vary their parental investment in relation to brood size advocates the existence of a mechanism for appraising offspring number, an aspect that has never been directly investigated. Here we tested the ability of parental female convict cichlid (Amatitlania nigrofasciata) to discriminate between two fry groups differing in number by measuring time spent attempting to recover groups of fry experimentally displaced from the next. Females spent more time trying to recover the fry from larger groups when tested with contrasts 6 versus 12 (1:2) and 6 versus 9 fry (2:3); however, they showed no preference in the 6 versus 8 (3:4) contrast, suggesting that this task exceeds their discrimination capacity.

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Acknowledgments

The authors gratefully acknowledge Maryam Hedayati rad for her assistance in data collection and behavioral measurements. We are also grateful to Tyrone Lucon Xiccato for his helpful comments on the manuscript. We thank the editor and two anonymous reviewers for their constructive and insightful comments.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Fisheries, Faculty of Natural Resources, University of Tehran, Chamran St, PO Box: 31585-4314, Karaj, Iran

    Mohammad Navid Forsatkar & Mohammad Ali Nematollahi

  2. Department of General Psychology, University of Padova, Padua, Italy

    Angelo Bisazza

Authors
  1. Mohammad Navid Forsatkar
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  2. Mohammad Ali Nematollahi
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  3. Angelo Bisazza
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Correspondence to Mohammad Ali Nematollahi.

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Forsatkar, M.N., Nematollahi, M.A. & Bisazza, A. Quantity discrimination in parental fish: female convict cichlid discriminate fry shoals of different sizes. Anim Cogn 19, 959–964 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-016-0997-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10071-016-0997-y

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