Nest-site selection in a fish species with paternal care
- PDF / 404,374 Bytes
- 10 Pages / 547.087 x 737.008 pts Page_size
- 41 Downloads / 205 Views
(0123456789().,-volV) ( 01234567 89().,-volV)
PRIMARY RESEARCH PAPER
Nest-site selection in a fish species with paternal care Theo C. M. Bakker
. Beat Mundwiler
Received: 11 May 2020 / Revised: 2 November 2020 / Accepted: 17 November 2020 Ó The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Fish that perform paternal care may increase their fitness by choosing nest sites that enhance survival and development of embryos. We studied nest-site choice with respect to dissolved oxygen concentration and water temperature in males of the three-spined stickleback (Gasterosteus aculeatus), a small fish species with exclusive male parental care that usually breeds in the littoral zone of freshwaters of the Northern hemisphere. Fathers oxygenate the embryos by fanning movements of their pectoral fins. We expected choice for conditions at potential nest sites that would benefit offspring development, i.e., higher temperature and higher dissolved oxygen concentration. In the laboratory, we offered males a choice between two potential nest
Handling editor: Grethe Robertsen
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10750-020-04470-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. T. C. M. Bakker B. Mundwiler Abteilung Verhaltenso¨kologie, Zoologisches Institut, University of Bern, Wohlenstrasse 50a, 3032 Hinterkappelen, Switzerland T. C. M. Bakker (&) Institute for Evolutionary Biology and Ecology, University of Bonn, An der Immenburg 1, 53121 Bonn, Germany e-mail: [email protected]
sites that differed in dissolved oxygen concentration or water temperature. Males preferred to build a nest at sites with a higher dissolved oxygen level or higher temperature and thus chose sites that would promote embryo development. Keywords Gasterosteus aculeatus Three-spined stickleback Dissolved oxygen concentration Water temperature Microhabitat Male nest-site preference
Introduction Nest-site choice has been particularly well studied in birds (see Barber, 2013) and is related to food availability and predator avoidance (e.g., Eichholz & Elmberg, 2014). It is assumed to be adaptive but there may be incongruence between nest-site preferences and nest success due to various anthropogenic, methodological, or ecological-evolutionary reasons such as limited access to nest sites due to competition, spatial variation in selection pressures, trade-offs with others selective pressures like microclimate, access to food, and extrapair copulations (reviewed in Chalfoun & Schmidt, 2012). Nevertheless, at the individual level, microhabitat nest-site choice may be crucial for the survival and development of progeny, especially in fishes as there is often considerable spatial variation in temperature and dissolved oxygen concentration
123
Hydrobiologia
(DOC) at potential nest sites. In addition to the water temperature and DOC, there are many abiotic factors that may direct nest-site choice such as risk of desiccation, wave exposure, and light intensity (e.g., Whoriske
Data Loading...
