Skip to main content
Log in

Male territory-visiting polygamy of the white-spotted boxfish Ostracion meleagris (Ostraciidae) involving daily spawning migration

  • Published:
Environmental Biology of Fishes Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

Ecological studies of boxfishes (Ostraciidae) are relatively limited, especially those related to mating systems. A few boxfishes have been shown to maintain harem polygyny, where males mate with cohabiting females within their territories; however, no other type of mating system has been reported for ostraciids. We conducted a field observational survey of Ostracion meleagris on the reefs of Kuchierabu-jima Island, Japan, focusing on home range distribution patterns and mating relationships among individuals. The spotted boxfish O. meleagris established a feeding home range on shallow reefs and migrated several hundred meters offshore most evenings, where pair spawning with high ascending behaviors (median: 7.2 m) from considerable depths (median: 8.5 m) occurred. Males began daily offshore migration earlier than females and waited for the approaches of females within their mating territories. Some territorial males maintained multiple mating opportunities each evening. Thus, the mating system of this boxfish is considered a male territory-visiting polygamy. The optimum GLMM model for explaining male mating success included the water depth of the male territory as a parameter, suggesting its importance as a factor in the mate choice of the boxfish. Their armored bodies make them less vulnerable to predation, which allows the boxfish to migrate a long way daily to spawn, using both shallow reefs suitable for foraging and offshore deeper reefs suitable for egg survival.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2
Fig. 3
Fig. 4

Similar content being viewed by others

Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

References

Download references

Acknowledgements

We thank the residents of Kuchierabu-jima Island for allowing us to perform the field survey. We also thank colleagues at the Laboratory of Biology of Aquatic Resources, Hiroshima University, for their support in this study. We also thank Dr. J. Shibata for helpful comments on the manuscript. We would like to thank Editage (www.editage.com) for English language editing.

Funding

This study was funded by the Sasakawa Scientific Research Grant from the Japan Science Society and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science KAKENHI, Grant Number 18K06419.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

Yuki Koide and Yoichi Sakai contributed to the conception and design of the study. Data collection and analyses were performed by Yuki Koide. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Yuki Koide, and the authors commented on the previous versions of the manuscript. Both authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Yuki Koide.

Ethics declarations

Ethics approval

All procedures performed in this study followed the Guidelines for the Proper Conduct of Animal Experiments outlined by the Hiroshima University Animal Research Committee (No. 020A170410 certified on April 10th, 2017), Guidelines for the Use of Animals in Research of the Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour and the Animal Behavior Society (https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2019.11.002) the Guidelines for the Use of Fishes in Research by the Ichthyological Society of Japan (http://www.fish isj.jp/english/guidelines.html), and the Guidelines for Ethological Studies by the Japan Ethological Society (http://www.ethology.jp/guideline.pdf).

Competing interests

The authors declare no competing interests.

Additional information

Publisher's note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Supplementary Information

Below is the link to the electronic supplementary material.

Supplementary file1 (MP4 126260 KB)

Supplementary file2 (MP4 22277 KB)

Rights and permissions

Springer Nature or its licensor holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Koide, Y., Sakai, Y. Male territory-visiting polygamy of the white-spotted boxfish Ostracion meleagris (Ostraciidae) involving daily spawning migration. Environ Biol Fish 105, 1165–1178 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-022-01330-9

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-022-01330-9

Keywords

Navigation