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Do Male Desert Gobies Compromise Offspring Care to Attract Additional Mating Opportunities?

Males often play a critical role in offspring care but the time and energy invested in looking after young can potentially limit their ability to seek out additional mating opportunities. Recent studies, however, suggest that a conflict between male parental effort and mating effort may not always b...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Symons, Nicholas, Svensson, P. Andreas, Wong, Bob B. M.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2011
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3110788/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21687677
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0020576
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author Symons, Nicholas
Svensson, P. Andreas
Wong, Bob B. M.
author_facet Symons, Nicholas
Svensson, P. Andreas
Wong, Bob B. M.
author_sort Symons, Nicholas
collection PubMed
description Males often play a critical role in offspring care but the time and energy invested in looking after young can potentially limit their ability to seek out additional mating opportunities. Recent studies, however, suggest that a conflict between male parental effort and mating effort may not always be inevitable, especially if breeding occurs near the nest, or if parental behaviours are under sexual selection. Accordingly, we set out to experimentally investigate male care and courtship in the desert goby Chlamydogobius eremius, a nest-guarding fish with exclusive paternal care. Despite courtship occurring near the nest, we found that when egg-tending males were given the opportunity to attract additional females, they fanned their eggs less often, engaged in shorter fanning bouts, and spent more of their time outside their nests courting. Our findings highlight the importance of understanding the circumstances under which reproductive tradeoffs are expected to occur and how these, in turn, operate to influence male reproductive decisions.
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spelling pubmed-31107882011-06-16 Do Male Desert Gobies Compromise Offspring Care to Attract Additional Mating Opportunities? Symons, Nicholas Svensson, P. Andreas Wong, Bob B. M. PLoS One Research Article Males often play a critical role in offspring care but the time and energy invested in looking after young can potentially limit their ability to seek out additional mating opportunities. Recent studies, however, suggest that a conflict between male parental effort and mating effort may not always be inevitable, especially if breeding occurs near the nest, or if parental behaviours are under sexual selection. Accordingly, we set out to experimentally investigate male care and courtship in the desert goby Chlamydogobius eremius, a nest-guarding fish with exclusive paternal care. Despite courtship occurring near the nest, we found that when egg-tending males were given the opportunity to attract additional females, they fanned their eggs less often, engaged in shorter fanning bouts, and spent more of their time outside their nests courting. Our findings highlight the importance of understanding the circumstances under which reproductive tradeoffs are expected to occur and how these, in turn, operate to influence male reproductive decisions. Public Library of Science 2011-06-08 /pmc/articles/PMC3110788/ /pubmed/21687677 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0020576 Text en Symons et al. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Symons, Nicholas
Svensson, P. Andreas
Wong, Bob B. M.
Do Male Desert Gobies Compromise Offspring Care to Attract Additional Mating Opportunities?
title Do Male Desert Gobies Compromise Offspring Care to Attract Additional Mating Opportunities?
title_full Do Male Desert Gobies Compromise Offspring Care to Attract Additional Mating Opportunities?
title_fullStr Do Male Desert Gobies Compromise Offspring Care to Attract Additional Mating Opportunities?
title_full_unstemmed Do Male Desert Gobies Compromise Offspring Care to Attract Additional Mating Opportunities?
title_short Do Male Desert Gobies Compromise Offspring Care to Attract Additional Mating Opportunities?
title_sort do male desert gobies compromise offspring care to attract additional mating opportunities?
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3110788/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21687677
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0020576
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