Hypoxia increases the risk of egg predation in a nest-guarding fish.

R Soc Open Sci

Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences , University of Gothenburg, Gothenburg , Sweden.

Published: August 2016

For fish with parental care, a nest should meet both the oxygenation needs of the eggs and help protect them against predators. While a small nest opening facilitates the latter, it impedes the former and vice versa. We investigated how the presence of potential egg predators in the form of shore crabs affects nest building, egg fanning, defensive displays and filial cannibalism of egg-guarding male sand gobies under two levels of dissolved oxygen. In the high oxygen treatment, males retained their nest opening size in the presence of crabs, while males in low oxygen built large nest openings both in the absence and presence of crabs, despite the fact that crabs were more likely to successfully intrude into nests with large entrances. Males in low oxygen also fanned more. In the presence of crabs males increased their defensive displays, but while males in high oxygen reduced fanning, males in low oxygen did not. Filial cannibalism was unaffected by treatment. Sand gobies thus prioritize egg ventilation over the protection afforded by small nest openings under hypoxia and adopt defensive behaviour to avert predator attention, even though this does not fully offset the threat from the egg predators.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5108961PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.160326DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

presence crabs
12
males low
12
low oxygen
12
small nest
8
nest opening
8
egg predators
8
defensive displays
8
filial cannibalism
8
sand gobies
8
high oxygen
8

Similar Publications

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!