New paper: Colony breeding cichlids have itchy feet
Very few fishes are colony breeding and so those that do are particularly interesting. In the clear waters of crater lake Apoyo, famous for its sympatric speciation of cichlids, the ‘short’ Midas cichlid have dense seasonal aggregations that breed and care for their young in beds of Chara algae. We wondered, why are they doing this? How does it relate to their family structures? Are males or females breeding where they were born or near their kin? We suspected that, given that the young babies are reared and tended in close proximity and with lots of brood swapping, that siblings might set up breeding territories close to each other. However, by sampling breeding pairs for genetic relatedness within and across multiple colonies, we discovered that there is no local genetic association. Nor does the biology differ, as patters are the same for males nor females. Our results suggest that strong philopatry or spatial assortative mating are unlikely to explain the rapid speciation processes associated with cichlids in Nicaraguan Lake Apoyo.
This was a collaboration between behavioural ecologist Topi Lehtonen, cichlid evolutionary biologist Axel Meyer, and evolutionary biologist Kathryn Elmer, now at IBAHCM Glasgow. A Uni Glasgow Honours student with Kathryn, Meri Lappalainen, also contributed to this work and is an author.
This paper is published open access in Scientific Reports at doi:10.1038/s41598-018-19266-5
