Sneaker males are not necessarily similar to females in colour in a sexually monochromatic cichlid

Male alternative reproductive tactics and sperm competition: a meta-analysis

In many animal species, males may exhibit one of several discrete, alternative ways of obtaining fertilisations, known as alternative reproductive tactics (ARTs). Males exhibiting ARTs typically differ in the extent to which they invest in traits that improve their mating success, or the extent to which they face sperm competition. This has led to the widespread prediction that males exhibiting ARTs associated with a high sperm competition risk, or lower investment into traits that improve their competitiveness before mating, should invest more heavily into traits that improve their competitiveness after mating, such as large ejaculates and high-quality sperm. However, despite many studies investigating this question since the 1990s, evidence for differences in sperm and ejaculate investment between male ARTs is mixed, and there has been no quantitative summary of this field. Following a systematic review of the literature, we performed a meta-analysis examining how testes size, sperm number and sperm traits differ between males exhibiting ARTs that face either a high or low sperm competition risk, or high or low investment in traits that increase mating success. We obtained data from 92 studies and 67 species from across the animal kingdom. Our analyses showed that male fish exhibiting ARTs facing a high sperm competition risk had significantly larger testes (after controlling for body size) than those exhibiting tactics facing a low sperm competition risk. However, this effect appears to be due to the inappropriate use of the gonadosomatic index as a body-size corrected measure of testes investment, which overestimates the difference in testes investment between male tactics in most cases. We found no significant difference in sperm number between males exhibiting different ARTs, regardless of whether sperm were measured from the male sperm stores or following ejaculation. We also found no significant difference in sperm traits between males exhibiting different ARTs, with the exception of sperm adenosine triphosphate (ATP) content in fish. Finally, the difference in post-mating investment between male ARTs was not influenced by the extent to which tactics were flexible, or by the frequency of sneakers in the population. Overall, our results suggest that, despite clear theoretical predictions, there is little evidence that male ARTs differ substantially in investment into sperm and ejaculates across species. The incongruence between theoretical and empirical results could be explained if (i) theoretical models fail to account for differences in overall resource levels between males exhibiting different ARTs or fundamental trade-offs between investment into different ejaculate and sperm traits, and (ii) studies often use sperm or ejaculate traits that do not reflect overall post-mating investment accurately or affect fertilisation success.

Maternal food provisioning in a substrate-brooding African cichlid

Fish demonstrate the greatest variety of parental care strategies within the animal kingdom. Fish parents seldom provision food for offspring, with some exceptions predominantly found in substrate-brooding Central American cichlids and mouth-brooding African cichlids. Here, we provide the first evidence of food provisioning in a substrate-brooding African cichlid Neolamprologus mondabu. This fish is a maternal substrate-brooding cichlid endemic to Lake Tanganyika, and feeds on benthic animals using unique techniques–individuals typically feed on the surface of sandy substrates, but also expose prey by digging up substrates with vigorous wriggling of their body and fins. Young also feed on benthos on the substrate surface, but only using the first technique. We observed that feeding induced by digging accounted for 30% of total feeding bouts in adult females, demonstrating that digging is an important foraging tactic. However, parental females fed less frequently after digging than non-parental females, although both females stayed in pits created by digging for approximately 30 s. Instead, young gathered in the pit and fed intensively, suggesting that parental females provision food for young by means of digging. We tested this hypothesis by comparing the feeding frequency of young before and after digging that was simulated by hand, and observed that young doubled their feeding frequency after the simulated digging. This suggests that parental females engage in digging to uncover food items that are otherwise unavailable to young, and provision food for them at the expense of their own foraging. This behavior was similar to what has been observed in Central American cichlids.