Abstract
Monogamy is rare in fishes and is usually associated with elaborate parental care. When parental care is present in fishes, it is usually the male that is responsible, and it is believed that there is a relationship between the high energetic investment and the certainty of paternity (except in the case of sneaker males). Osteoglossum bicirrhosum is considered a monogamous fish, and has particular behavioral traits that permit the study of mating systems and parental care, such as male mouthbrooding. We investigated the genetic relationships of males with the broods found in their oral cavities in Osteoglossum samples collected in a natural environment in the lower Purus river basin, Amazonas, Brazil. Fourteen broods were analyzed for parentage (268 young and 14 adult males) using eight microsatellite loci. The results indicate that eleven broods show a monogamous system. In one brood, however, approximately 50% of the young were genetically compatible with being offspring of another male, and in another two broods, none of the subsampled young were compatible with the genotypes of the brooding male. The result of this first brood may be explained by the extra-parental contribution of a sneaker male, whereas cooperative parental care may explain the result in the other two broods.
Highlights
Fishes have a wide diversity of reproductive traits, which make them an interesting group in which to study the evolution of mating systems (DeWoody et al, 2000).Within fishes, the mating system seems to be strongly connected to the type of parental care (Perrone & Zaret, 1979)
Multiple paternity and cooperative parental care in Osteoglossum bicirrhosum these species this role of a caregiver is played by the male
The objective of this study was, to identify the mating system of the silver arowana O. bicirrhosum and the genetic relationships among males and the respective broods carried in their mouth cavity by using microsatellite, highly polymorphic DNA markers, very useful for parentage studies (Queller et al, 1993; DeWoody, 2005)
Summary
Fishes have a wide diversity of reproductive traits, which make them an interesting group in which to study the evolution of mating systems (DeWoody et al, 2000).Within fishes, the mating system seems to be strongly connected to the type of parental care (Perrone & Zaret, 1979). A rare mating system among fishes, is mainly related to elaborate and prolonged reproduction, in which bi-parental care becomes a necessity (Trivers, 1972). Blumer (1982) considered that 89 families of fishes perform some kind of parental care, and in the majority of Multiple paternity and cooperative parental care in Osteoglossum bicirrhosum these species this role of a caregiver is played by the male. Trivers (1972) suggested that paternal investment in parental care is directly related to the certainty of paternity, that is, the more the male is in doubt of its paternity, the less will be its willingness to invest in the parental care, this concept is not universally accepted (Werren et al, 1980; Bouwman et al, 2005). Ah-King et al, (2004) point out that on the contrary of what would be expected, for some species of fish where the certainty of paternity within the brood - and subsequently the proportion of true paternity - is reduced due to the occurrence of sneaker males, there is no decrease in the investment in parental care
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