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Filial cannibalism as a conditional strategy in males of a paternal mouthbrooding fish

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Abstract

Filial cannibalism is widespread in a variety of animal species and has been generally accepted as an adaptive behavior. Within a population, some individuals adopt filial cannibalism and others do not, in spite of its adaptiveness. There is little knowledge of how such a polymorphic trait is maintained in nature. To understand the underlying mechanism of cannibalistic polymorphism, we conducted a long-term field study that involved monitoring of the reproductive experience of marked individuals in the paternal mouthbrooding cardinalfish, Apogon doederleini, in which parental males sometimes cannibalize their entire broods. We assumed that filial cannibalism can be described as one of three possible strategies: alternative, mixed or conditional. Individual cannibalistic tendencies, represented by the number of entire brood cannibalism performed by each individual in one breeding season, showed a random distribution within the study population. Moreover, the individual cannibalistic tendencies were not consistent between two successive seasons. These results suggest that filial cannibalism is phenotypically plastic, thus eliminating the alternative strategy as a possible mechanism. Comparison of variance in reproductive success between cannibals and non-cannibals showed that observations were not in accordance with those expected in the case that males adopt filial cannibalism stochastically, that is, as a mixed strategy. Our previous studies have indicated that filial cannibalism is affected by male status, such as age, somatic condition and mate availability. In conclusion, filial cannibalism by male A. doederleini is carried out as a conditional strategy.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to K. Omori for providing us with unpublished data, and V.␣Jormalainen, C. Kvarnemo and an anonymous reviewer for their comments on the manuscript. We also thank the members of the Department of Biology and Earth Sciences, Ehime University, the Department of Bio- and Geosciences, Osaka City University, and the Marine Station U.W.A. for their field assistance and discussion of our manuscript. This research was partly supported by the Grant for Biodiversity Research of the 21st Century COE (A14).

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  1. Tomohiro Takeyama

    Present address: Center for Ecological Research, Kyoto University, 2-509-3, Hirano, Otsu, 520-2113, Japan

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology and Geosciences, Graduate School of Science, Osaka City University, Osaka, 558-8585, Japan

    Tomohiro Takeyama

  2. Center for Ecological Research, Kyoto University, Otsu, 520-2113, Japan

    Noboru Okuda

  3. Department of Biology and Earth Sciences, Faculty of Science, Ehime University, Matsuyama, 790-8577, Japan

    Yasunobu Yanagisawa

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  1. Tomohiro Takeyama
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  2. Noboru Okuda
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  3. Yasunobu Yanagisawa
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Correspondence to Tomohiro Takeyama.

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Takeyama, T., Okuda, N. & Yanagisawa, Y. Filial cannibalism as a conditional strategy in males of a paternal mouthbrooding fish. Evol Ecol 21, 109–119 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-006-9127-7

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