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Evidence of disassortative mating in a Tanganyikan cichlid fish and its role in the maintenance of intrapopulation dimorphism

2008; Royal Society; Volume: 4; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1098/rsbl.2008.0244

1744-957X

Tetsumi Takahashi, Michio Hori,

Wildlife Ecology and Conservation

Morphological dimorphism in the mouth-opening direction (‘lefty’ versus ‘righty’) has been documented in several fish species. It has been suggested that this deflection is heritable in a Mendelian one-locus, two-allele fashion. Several population models have demonstrated that lateral dimorphism is maintained by negative frequency-dependent selection, resulting from interactions between predator and prey species. However, other mechanisms for the maintenance of lateral dimorphism have not yet been tested. Here, we found that the scale-eating cichlid fish Perissodus microlepis exhibited disassortative mating, in which reproductive pairings between lefties and righties occurred at higher than expected frequency ( p <0.001). A previous study reported that a lefty–righty pairing produces a 1 : 1 ratio of lefty : righty young, suggesting that disassortative mating contributes to the maintenance of lateral dimorphism. A combination of disassortative mating and negative frequency-dependent selection may stabilize lateral dimorphism more than would a single mechanism.