Abstract
Providing parental care is potentially costly. Costs can arise through elevated energy expenditure or from an increased risk of mortality. A cost of parental care can also occur because a parent is compromised in their ability to forage. We used pumpkinseed Lepomis gibbosus, a fish with an alternative male mating strategy, to test whether parental males differed in their feeding in comparison with females and cuckolder males. To address this question, we examined the stomach contents of female, cuckolder male, and parental male pumpkinseed during the breeding season over an entire diel cycle. We showed that parental males had a lower total weight of food in their stomachs in comparison with females, while cuckolder males did not. Parental males also had a lower weight and number of chironomids in their stomachs. The temporal pattern of feeding of parental males diverged from that of females, and they had a lower probability of pupal chironomids in their stomachs, which implies spatial segregation in foraging. Parental males had a greater probability of conspecific eggs in their stomachs than females, while the probability of egg cannibalism did not differ between cuckolder males and females. Overall, these finding meet predictions in accordance with an assumption that parental care and territoriality can compromise feeding.
Highlights
Parental care can be costly, potentially constraining future reproductive success (Clutton-Brock 1991; Smiseth et al 2012)
There was no difference between cuckolder males and females in the weight of chironomids in their stomachs (Table 3), though there was a lower number of chironomids in the stomachs of parental males (Table 4; Fig. 4)
The constraints imposed by parental care, when associated with territorial defence of a nest site, are assumed to limit the ability of a parent to forage (Clutton-Brock 1991)
Summary
Parental care can be costly, potentially constraining future reproductive success (Clutton-Brock 1991; Smiseth et al 2012). Communicated by: Sven Thatje energy expenditure or if parental care curtails normal feeding activities (Clutton-Brock 1991; Klug et al 2012). Parental care is widespread in teleost fishes, with approximately one quarter of all teleost families including taxa that show some form of parental care (Wootton and Smith 2015). The most common form of care is attending or guarding the offspring, whereby the parent protects the eggs and embryos from predators, including conspecifics (Wootton and Smith 2015). Guarding the offspring may severely limit normal foraging activities, though this has rarely been demonstrated (Wootton and Smith 2015)
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