Monogamous pair bonds and mate switching in the Western Australian seahorse Hippocampus subelongatus
By C. Kvarnemo, G. Moore, Adam Jones, William S. Nelson, J. Avise. 2000
117 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Apparently monogamous animals often prove, upon genetic inspection, to mate polygamously. Seahorse males provide care in a brood pouch. An earlier genetic study of the Western Australian seahorse demonstrated that males mate with only one female for each particular brood. Here we investigate whether males remain monogamous in sequential pregnancies during a breeding season. In a natural population we tagged males and sampled young from two successive broods of 14 males. Microsatellite analyses of parentage revealed that eight males re‐mated with the same female, and six with a new female. Thus, in this first study to document long‐term genetic monogamy in a seahorse, we show that switches of mates still occur. Polygynous males moved greater distances between broods, and tended to have longer interbrood intervals, than monogamous males, suggesting substantial costs associated with the breaking of pair bonds which may explain the high degree of social monogamy in this fish genus.
Subfields: Aquatic Science, Nature and Landscape Conservation, Physiology
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/2223295cae5c2e9b9cb17fd05beefcb4a62b386b
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In Aquatic Science
In Nature and Landscape Conservation
- A. C. J. Vincent
- J. Avise
- J. McPherson
- F. Janzen
- Devon E. Pearse
- Truly Santika
- Janet Franklin
- C. Morjan
In Physiology
Citations in the corpus
- First Field Studies of an Endangered South African seahorse, Hippocampus capensis (2003, background): “species do (Dauwe 1992, Nijhoff 1993, Vincent 1995, Vincent & Sadler 1995, Jones et al. 1998, Kvarnemo et al. 2000, Perante et al. 2002).”
- Multiple paternity, sperm storage, and reproductive success of female and male painted turtles (Chrysemys picta) in nature (2001, background): “For example, Olsson et al. (1996) assigned paternity in sand lizards using DNA fingerprinting and showed that paternal genotype influenced various offspring traits; Kvarnemo et al. (2000) showed that male-pregnant seahorses who retained the same mate over multiple reproductive cycles had shorter i”