Effect of the administration of prolactin-releasing peptide2 on feeding activity in the intertidal blenny Rhabdoblennius nitidus (Günther, 1861)

The potential for egg-guarding care in females of the damselfish, Dascyllus reticulatus, in the absence of uniparental male care

Male damselfish typically demonstrate uniparental egg-guarding care in nature. Potential plasticity in sexual behavior has recently been reported in various teleost fish. To examine behavioral plasticity in parental care, we conducted aquarium experiments to explore the potential for egg-guarding care in the female damselfish, Dascyllus reticulatus. After initial caretaking, males were removed from the mating nests, and cohabiting females frequently exhibited egg predation on the same day. However, we confirmed that females showed significantly decreased egg-predation frequencies on the following day and showed egg-caring behaviors. All experimental females guarded their eggs until they hatched. Females subsequently spawned eggs as females even after performing parental care behaviors, indicating no progression of sex change into males. Molecular analysis of select pituitary gland hormones indicated that egg-caring females and males showed high expression levels of prolactin, suggesting its involvement in the development of parental care behaviors. The cryptic possession of caretaking ability in females may be a tactical response to the need for temporary replacement of the care roles in cases where caretaking males are removed, for example, through predation, in damselfish species living in sexually cohabiting groups.

Parent-offspring cannibalism throughout the animal kingdom: a review of adaptive hypotheses

Parents that kill and consume their offspring often appear to be acting against their own reproductive interests. Yet parent-offspring cannibalism is common and taxonomically widespread across the animal kingdom. In this review, I provide an overview of our current understanding of parent-offspring cannibalism, which has seen a proliferation in adaptive hypotheses over the past 20 years for why parents consume their own young. I review over four decades of research into this perplexing behaviour, drawing from work conducted on fishes, reptiles, insects, birds, and mammals among other taxa. Many factors have been hypothesised to explain parent-offspring cannibalism in nature, including poor parental energy reserves, small or large brood sizes, low or uncertain parentage, and high brood densities, and additional factors are still being uncovered. Parent-offspring cannibalism does not appear to have a single predominant explanation; rather, the factor, or set of factors, that govern its expression is largely taxon specific. Parents may either consume all offspring under their care (full-brood cannibalism) or consume a fraction of their offspring (partial brood cannibalism). These forms of cannibalism are thought to provide adaptive benefits to cannibals under a range of circumstances, primarily by allowing parents to allocate parental efforts more optimally - energy from eating (some of) one's current offspring can be redirected to other offspring, or to parental growth, survival, and ultimately to other future reproductive endeavours. Thus, parent-offspring cannibalism is a phenotypically plastic trait that responds to changing environmental, social, and physiological conditions. The expression of parent-offspring cannibalism in any given system is intimately linked to the reproductive value of current young relative to parents' expectations for future reproduction, and also to whether parental care is predominantly depreciable or non-depreciable. Furthermore, parent-offspring cannibalism has the potential to generate conflict between the sexes, and I briefly discuss some consequences of this conflict on patterns of mate choice. Finally, there still remain many aspects of this behaviour where our understanding is poor, and I highlight these topics to help guide future research.