タンガニイカ・シクリッドのきょうだい間攻撃の論文が出版されました
私達の研究”Dynamics of sibling aggression of a cichlid fish in Lake Tanganyika”がHydrobiologia誌から出版されました。
タンガニイカ・シクリッドNeolamprologus furciferの親保護下の幼魚が攻撃し合う至近要因を野外で観察と実験で明らかにしました。幼魚同士の攻撃を血縁者間の対立と捉えて考察しています。多くの研究が行われてきたタンガニイカ・シクリッドですが、きょうだい間対立という視点で研究はいままで行われてきませんでした。興味がある方はお一読下さい。なお、僕は今、タンガニイカの辺りにいて、楽しく調査をしています。出版された論文もより発展できると思います。
あぶすと…
Siblings often compete for limited resources, particularly food provided by their parents. Such competition is usually nonviolent, but direct aggression has evolved in some species. However, there is little knowledge about sibling aggression in species without parental provisioning. Here, we investigated sibling aggression in the cichlid Neolamprologus furcifer in Lake Tanganyika, Zambia. In this species, females guard their broods in the nest but do not provide any food. Early-stage fry did not show any sibling aggression while foraging on plankton, but began to show nonlethal aggression once they started to forage on small benthic shrimp at 2 weeks of age. The frequency of sibling aggression decreased at week 7, when the density of fry decreased remarkably. Sibling aggression also decreased following a short-term increase in food through supplemental feeding. The aggression was higher in the morning than in the afternoon despite higher abundance of shrimp at that time, and decreased when the number of shrimp in the nest was experimentally reduced. These results indicate that food availability affects sibling aggression of animals that do not exhibit parental provisioning.
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