Quantifying mating success of territorial males and sneakers in a bower-building cichlid fish.

ABSTRACT: The strategies and traits males evolve to mate with females are incredible in their diversity. Theory on the evolution of secondary sexual characters suggests that evolving any costly trait or strategy will pay off and stabilise in the population if it is advantageous compared to the alternative less costly strategy, but quantifying the relative success of the two can be difficult. In Lake Malawi, Africa, there are >200 species of cichlid fish in which the males form leks and spend several weeks per year building sand-castle "bowers" several times their size. We tested the idea that a less costly "sneaking" strategy could be successful by quantifying the mating success of bower-holding versus non-bower-holding males. We PIT-tagged every fish in a semi-natural experimental set-up and placed

SUBMITTER: Magalhaes IS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5269580 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature