Abstract
The dwarf morph of Telmatochromis temporalis uses empty snail shells as shelters and spawning sites. This morph varies in body colour from pale to dark within populations. Pale individuals are likely to be cryptic on sandy-brown backgrounds through colour matching, but adaptive significance of dark individuals is unknown. The present study proposes two hypotheses for the occurrence of dark individuals: crypsis in darkness inside shells (darkness matching) and crypsis in irregular patterns consisting of shell shadows on sandy-brown backgrounds (pattern matching). The former hypothesis is less likely to be the main factor evolving dark bodies, because body darkness was not correlated with the amount of time that the fish remained within shells. Body darkness was correlated with shell density in their habitats, supporting the latter hypothesis because dark individuals may be able to mingle with shell shadows effectively at sites where shells were abundant. This study also found that body darkness was environmentally induced; therefore, this fish may shift between these anti-predator tactics (crypsis of pale individuals on sandy-brown backgrounds through colour matching and crypsis of dark individuals in irregular shadow patterns through pattern matching) by changing body darkness in response to shell density.
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Acknowledgements
I thank H. Phiri, M. Mbewe, D. Sinynza, T. Banda, L. Makasa, and other staff at the Lake Tanganyika Research Unit in Mpulungu for support in the field. I am also grateful to M. Hori, M. Kohda, and C. Sturmbauer for the loan of field research equipment, B. Kapembwa, K. Symkanz, B. Kasikira, and F. Chinyama for field assistance, R. Sakurai for advice on the manuscript, and the editor in charge, C. Sefc, and two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments on earlier version of this manuscript. This study was partly supported by Grants-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B) (Nos. 26291078 and 18H02499) from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), Japan.
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Guest editors: S. Koblmüller, R. C. Albertson, M. J. Genner, K. M. Sefc & T. Takahashi / Advances in Cichlid Research III: Behavior, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
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Takahashi, T. Colour variation of a shell-brooding cichlid fish from Lake Tanganyika. Hydrobiologia 832, 193–200 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-018-3717-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-018-3717-6