Increased guarding duration reduces growth and offspring number in females of the skeleton shrimp Caprella penantis
Section snippets
Methods
In October 2007, C. penantis were collected at Matsushima (32°31′N, 130°26′E), Kyushu, Japan. Individuals were found inhabiting the sea moss Bugula neritina, which commonly grows attached to floats. All specimens in the present study were of the coastal type described in Bynum, 1978, Bynum, 1980. During collection, all samples were temporarily kept in plastic bottles with natural substratum in sea water. Samples were immediately brought to the laboratory and used in the following experiments.
Results
Guarding pair occurrence differed significantly between the three treatments (chi-square test: χ22 = 29.08, P < 0.0001). Guarding pair frequency was 0.042 (20/481) in the male-biased sex ratio treatment, 0.012 (8/689) in the even sex ratio treatment and 0.002 (1/634) in the female-biased sex ratio treatment throughout the experimental period. In some cases, individual females were found guarded over consecutive observations. However, survival of females did not differ significantly between the
Discussion
In this study, we investigated the cost of precopulatory guarding to females by manipulating the sex ratio and tracing the reproductive history in C. penantis. When the sex ratio was experimentally skewed to males, the incidence of guarding pairs increased (although the occurrence of guarding pairs might have been underestimated, as our observations were conducted once a day), whereas female growth rate and the number of juveniles produced decreased. The results suggest that longer durations of
Acknowledgments
We are grateful for valuable comments from the editor and two anonymous referees. We also thank H. Shimazaki for his help for sampling in this study. In addition, we are grateful to T. Watanabe, T. Nojima, Y. Shibata and Dr C. Norman. The experiments reported herein comply with the current laws of Japan.
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2017, Animal BehaviourCitation Excerpt :However, missing effects could also have been caused by the low number of offspring (only three) in the male-biased plots, where we expected the largest effect on offspring size. These results are in good agreement with other studies that have shown a conflict between the parents over paternity and offspring number or quality (Hopwood, Moore, Tregenza, & Royle, 2015; Jormalainen, Merilaita, & Riihimäki, 2001; Takeshita, Lombardo, Wada, & Henmi, 2011; but see Rodríguez-Muñoz, Bretman, & Tregenza, 2011). Note, however, that at present we are unable to exclude that guarding by males can be successful also against brood parasites and predators and more experiments are needed to fully understand the role of the males.
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Y. Henmi is at the Aitsu Marine Station, Center for Marine Environment Studies, Kumamoto University, Matsushima, Kami-Amakusa, Kumamoto 861-6102, Japan.