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Convict cichlid parents that stay with the same mate develop unique and consistent divisions of roles

Previous studies, largely on avian species, have suggested that pairs that are permanently monogamous and have biparental care develop a coordination over time that enhances offspring survival. If this is the case, we predicted that a parent involved in biparental care would develop a pattern of bip...

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Autores principales: Snekser, Jennifer L., Itzkowitz, Murray
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: PeerJ Inc. 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7745672/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33362975
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.10534
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author Snekser, Jennifer L.
Itzkowitz, Murray
author_facet Snekser, Jennifer L.
Itzkowitz, Murray
author_sort Snekser, Jennifer L.
collection PubMed
description Previous studies, largely on avian species, have suggested that pairs that are permanently monogamous and have biparental care develop a coordination over time that enhances offspring survival. If this is the case, we predicted that a parent involved in biparental care would develop a pattern of biparental care specific to a particular mate and remain consistent in that pattern over time but would lose this pattern if it were to change mates. We tested this prediction with the convict cichlid fish (Amatitlania nigrofasciata) which has biparental care that is both complex and flexible. In this species, each parent can perform all parental roles but typically shows a division of labor in which males typically defend against offspring predators while the female typically provides direct care to the offspring. At various times, the parents briefly switch roles. Our experiments revealed that pairs that remained together for two consecutive broods were more consistent in their parental behaviors, including time they spent near the intruder and in the nest compared to pairs that were comprised of individuals that had previously mated with other partners. Also individuals that remained with the same partner were also more consistent as a parental unit, maintaining their sex-specific roles of males defending aggressively against an intruder and females spending more time directly caring for young. While our experiment clearly support our prediction that individuals do develop unique coordination with specific individuals, convict cichlids in nature appear to be largely serially monogamous in which they mate only once before changing partners. Thus, it is likely this coordination may be available in many species that have biparental care but become adaptive when repeated matings become common.
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spelling pubmed-77456722020-12-24 Convict cichlid parents that stay with the same mate develop unique and consistent divisions of roles Snekser, Jennifer L. Itzkowitz, Murray PeerJ Animal Behavior Previous studies, largely on avian species, have suggested that pairs that are permanently monogamous and have biparental care develop a coordination over time that enhances offspring survival. If this is the case, we predicted that a parent involved in biparental care would develop a pattern of biparental care specific to a particular mate and remain consistent in that pattern over time but would lose this pattern if it were to change mates. We tested this prediction with the convict cichlid fish (Amatitlania nigrofasciata) which has biparental care that is both complex and flexible. In this species, each parent can perform all parental roles but typically shows a division of labor in which males typically defend against offspring predators while the female typically provides direct care to the offspring. At various times, the parents briefly switch roles. Our experiments revealed that pairs that remained together for two consecutive broods were more consistent in their parental behaviors, including time they spent near the intruder and in the nest compared to pairs that were comprised of individuals that had previously mated with other partners. Also individuals that remained with the same partner were also more consistent as a parental unit, maintaining their sex-specific roles of males defending aggressively against an intruder and females spending more time directly caring for young. While our experiment clearly support our prediction that individuals do develop unique coordination with specific individuals, convict cichlids in nature appear to be largely serially monogamous in which they mate only once before changing partners. Thus, it is likely this coordination may be available in many species that have biparental care but become adaptive when repeated matings become common. PeerJ Inc. 2020-12-14 /pmc/articles/PMC7745672/ /pubmed/33362975 http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.10534 Text en ©2020 Snekser and Itzkowitz https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
spellingShingle Animal Behavior
Snekser, Jennifer L.
Itzkowitz, Murray
Convict cichlid parents that stay with the same mate develop unique and consistent divisions of roles
title Convict cichlid parents that stay with the same mate develop unique and consistent divisions of roles
title_full Convict cichlid parents that stay with the same mate develop unique and consistent divisions of roles
title_fullStr Convict cichlid parents that stay with the same mate develop unique and consistent divisions of roles
title_full_unstemmed Convict cichlid parents that stay with the same mate develop unique and consistent divisions of roles
title_short Convict cichlid parents that stay with the same mate develop unique and consistent divisions of roles
title_sort convict cichlid parents that stay with the same mate develop unique and consistent divisions of roles
topic Animal Behavior
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7745672/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/33362975
http://dx.doi.org/10.7717/peerj.10534
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