Environmental Biology of Fishes

, Volume 28, Issue 1–4, pp 101–112 | Cite as

Alternative life-history styles of Japanese freshwater sculpins revisited

  • Akira Goto
Article
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Synopsis

Japanese freshwater sculpins consist of 6Cottus and 1Trachidermus species, with various types of life-cycles, namely, catadromous, amphidromous, lacustrine land-locked and fluvial land-locked. Among them,C. amblystomopsis andC. nozawae have been regarded as sibling species. Because of very similar morphological and ecological adult characteristics they were formerly classified as a single species.C. amblystomopsis mainly inhabits the lower courses of rivers and produces many small eggs from which pelagic larvae are formed. In contrast,C. nozawae lives in the middle or upper courses of rivers and deposits few, large eggs, from which well-developed benthic young emerge, well on the way to the definitive phenotype as fully formed juveniles. These two species have distinctly different life-cycles: amphidromous forC. amblystomopsis and fluvial forC. nozawae. A comparison of the early ontogeny shows that, amongCottus species, the small-egg, amphidromousC. amblystomopsis is altricial, while the large-egg, fluvialC. nozawae is precocial. Assuming thatC. nozawae has been derived phylogenetically fromC. amblystomopsis or its ancestral relatives, it is reasonable to consider that the fluvial land-locked life-history style ofC. nozawae has evolved from the ancestral arnphidromous one through adapting to the upstream habitat by an increase in egg size and consequent truncation of the larval period.

Key words

Speleophils Egg size Clutch size Amphidromous Fluvial land-locked Altricial Precocial Life-history evolution 
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Copyright information

© Kluwer Academic Publishers 1990

Authors and Affiliations

  • Akira Goto
    • 1
  1. 1.Department of Biology, Faculty of FisheriesHokkaido UniversityHokodateJapan

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