Acoustic and visual courtship traits in two sympatric marine Gobiidae species – Pomatoschistus microps and Pomatoschistus minutus

Eva-Lotta Blom,Ola Svensson,Isabel Mück,Katja Heubel

doi:10.1007/s10641-016-0550-5

Eva-Lotta Blom, Ola Svensson + Show 2 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s10641-016-0550-5

Copy DOI

Abstract

Divergence in courtship traits across species can evolve as adaptations to different environments, and also through avoidance of reproductive interference and character displacement. Differences may also be explained by phylogenetic relationships. We compared different courtship traits, including male courtship sounds, in two sympatric Pomatoschistus species. Both species are characterised by having male and female courtship, and paternal care of eggs in nests under mussel shells and rocks. In addition to presenting novel observations, we reviewed the literature on courtship traits for both species and complemented it with new observations. We found that courting males of the common goby P. microps sing louder and produce sounds of shorter duration than males of the sand goby P. minutus. Furthermore, males of P. microps swim faster towards females during courtship than males of P. minutus. The eyes of P. minutus females turn black during courtship attempts, whereas this is not the case for females of P. microps. Species-specific differences in courtship sounds and behavior may lead to different susceptibility of the two species to environmental change such as noise pollution and turbidity.

Highlights

Animals use a wide range of modalities during courtship and the effectiveness of signals co-varies with environmental conditions (Bradbury and Vehrencamp 2011; Candolin and Wong 2012)
Four P. minutus males produced the trains inside the nest while the females were at the nest entrance, and one male of P. minutus produced the two first trains when the female was inside the nest
The latter two trains fall within the range of all sound parameters of the other eight P. minutus trains, and there was no qualitative difference between courtship sounds produced when the female was inside the nest compared to when she was outside the nest

Summary

Introduction

Animals use a wide range of modalities during courtship and the effectiveness of signals co-varies with environmental conditions (Bradbury and Vehrencamp 2011; Candolin and Wong 2012). In the so called ‘sand goby group’ (family Gobiidae, Huyse et al 2004), at least eight species have been shown to produce low frequency acoustic pulses in a reproductive context (Malavasi et al 2012; Bolgan et al 2013; Pedroso et al 2013; de Jong et al 2016) two-spotted goby Gobiusculus flavescens (Fabricius, 1779), Adriatic dwarf goby Knipowitschia panizzae (Verga, 1841), Italian spring goby Knipowitschia punctatissima (Canestrini, 1864) canestrini’s goby Pomatoschistus canestrini (Ninni, 1883), marbled goby Pomatoschistus marmoratus (Risso, 1810), common goby Pomatoschistus microps (Krøyer, 1838) (one individual only), sand goby Pomatoschistus minutus (Pallas, 1770) and painted gobyPomatoschistus pictus (Malm, 1865) The functions of these sounds are still unknown, but they have been proposed to be used in male courtship and female choice (Lugli and Torricelli 1999; Lindström and Lugli 2000; Pedroso et al 2013), or in species recognition (Pedroso et al 2013)

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion