Skip to content

Pregnant male pipefish play favorites

pipefish.jpg

I've been fascinated with the seahorse since the third grade, when I did a report on the fish and learned that the males are the ones to get pregnant and carry their young. (Believe me, I wished my husband was a seahorse many times during my two pregnancies!)

Today, I'm a little less impressed with the seahorse and its relative, the pipefish - thanks to a Nature study showing that these dads aren't quite as devoted and loving as I imagined. (Okay, okay, so this isn't exactly a medical study, but it does speak to pregnancy and issues of good parenting.) From Scientific American Observations:

A new study of seahorse cousins called pipefish found that the males can be particular-and proactive-about how they treat their developing young. These fishes' dedication to their unborn progeny appears depends on how suitable they find the female mate to be, reports a pair of researchers from Texas A&M University.

"If the male likes the mom, the kids are treated better," Kimberly Paczolt, of the Department of Biology at [Texas A&M University] and lead researcher in the study, said in a prepared statement.

An accompanying Nature editorial elaborates:

...As is evident from Paczolt and Jones's study, [the male's brood pouch] grants fathers better control over reproduction - males may use their role as carers not only to nurture the eggs but also to favour those from high-quality females and disfavour and/or exploit those of low-quality females. What at first sight seems an egalitarian partnership between males and females, both investing heavily in their young, looks more like brooding sexual conflict.

Photo by Akuppa

Popular posts