Abstract
Spawning time and male mating tactics of parrotfishes (family Scaridae) were investigated on a fringing coral reef at Iriomote Island, Okinawa. Spawning was observed in 14 species, and more frequently in more abundant species such as Chlorurus sordidus, Scarus rivulatus and Chlorurus bowersi. At the reef-edge spawning site, C. bowersi spawned at high tide, C. sordidus spawned both at high tide and in the early morning, whereas Calotomus carolinus and most of the Scarus species such as S. rivulatus spawned only in the early morning, mostly 0630–0830 h. Spawning only in the early morning irrespective of tide phase and moon age has seldom been reported from the scarid species of other localities. It is suggested that spawning in the early morning would be adaptive in species such as S. rivulatus, which migrated considerable distances (ca. 500 m) to the inshore feeding sites, in order to minimize feeding losses due to migration. For male mating tactics, pair spawning by territorial TP (terminal phase) males occurred in all 14 species, and streaking and group spawning by nonterritorial small IP (initial phase) males were seen more frequently in more abundant species. Moreover, group spawning by nonterritorial TP males, which were larger than the IP males but smaller than the territorial TP males, frequently occurred in S. rivulatus. Such mating tactics of TP males have not been reported from Scaridae.
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Acknowledgments
The Iriomote Laboratory of the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature and the Iriomote Station of the Tropical Biosphere Research Center at the University of the Ryukyus provided the facilities for the fieldwork. Chukyo University granted leave for a long-term research trip to TK in 2005. We are grateful to A. Fujiwara and Y. Uchikawa for field assistance, and to B. Brown, J. Choat, T. Donaldson, M. Kohda, R. Robertson, G. Sancho, Y. Sakai and anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier versions of the manuscript. This work was funded by the Iriomote Project of the Research Institute for Humanity and Nature in 2005 and a Grant-in-Aid (no. 18510207) to TK from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science. Any fieldwork in this study complied with the current laws of Japan, in which it was performed.
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Kuwamura, T., Sagawa, T. & Suzuki, S. Interspecific variation in spawning time and male mating tactics of the parrotfishes on a fringing coral reef at Iriomote Island, Okinawa. Ichthyol Res 56, 354–362 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10228-009-0108-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10228-009-0108-z