Meeting Abstract
Parental aggression can be a costly behavior and flexible in its expression based upon context. While defense of offspring from potential predators has been well studied in the convict cichlid, it is unclear why parents are aggressive towards other parental pairs who are not likely offspring predators. In this experiment we explore the aggressive behavior of pairs towards parental pairs and unpaired individuals using bottle presentations in the field. We found that parental pairs displayed more towards other parental pairs compared to unpaired individuals. We attributed this difference as a means to prevent brood mixing. Bites did not differ between treatments, however there was a sex difference in bites, with males preferring to bite males and females showing no preference. As the higher level of display was observed both in the presence and absence of fry, we also examined the pair response to fry alone. Focal pairs were more aggressive to stimulus fry which were larger than their own, indicating these fry represent a risk to the focal pair, as predicted by previous findings on brood mixing. We conclude that pair aggression towards parental pairs as a means of preventing brood mixing is greater than pair aggression towards unpaired fish which are offspring predators.
