Many animal parents invest heavily to ensure offspring survival, yet some eventually consume some or all of their very own young. This so-called filial cannibalism is known from a wide range of taxa, but its adaptive benefit remains largely unclear. The extent to which parents cannibalize their broods varies substantially not only between species, but also between individuals, indicating that i...

A cannibal has to weigh the benefits of the consumption and removal of competing conspecifics against the potential loss of fitness through filial cannibalism. We examined the role of the presence of conspecific females in informing adaptive cannibalism decisions. Females of the hemipteran bug Geocoris pallens express low egg cannibalism when alone but become much more cannibalistic in the pres...

In fish, brood cycling parental males sometimes eat some or all of their eggs, a behavior termed filial cannibalism. We tested predictions of filial cannibalism models related to the cost of parental care in the male sand goby, Pomatoschistus minutus, by increasing the parental effort (fanning expenditure) through reduced levels of dissolved oxygen to 39% in an experimental group, whereas a con...

Cannibalism of small numbers of offspring by a parent has been proposed as an adaptive parental strategy, by providing energy to support parental care. However, there are few empirical studies to support this hypothesis. We conducted field and laboratory experiments to investigate partial filial cannibalism in Stegastes leucostictus, a coral reef fish with paternal care. Partial cannibalism was...

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2018.03.003 0003-3472/© 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevie license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Although the consumption of one's own offspring is often viewed as maladaptive, under some circumstances this behaviour can be a beneficial way to terminate parental care. When the costs of providing care are extremely high or the benefits of per...

Filial cannibalism (the consumption of one's own offspring) is thought to represent an adaptive strategy in many animals. However, little is known about the details of which offspring are consumed when a parent cannibalizes. Here, we examined patterns of within-brood filial cannibalism in the sand goby (Pomatoschistus minutus). Males spawned sequentially with two females, and we asked whether m...

Filial cannibalism occurs in many animal species ranging from insects to mammals, and is especially well described in teleost fishes. Numerous causes may lead to this behaviour, e.g. certainty of paternity. However, the cues males use to assess their paternity often remain unknown. One possible way to differentiate between own and foreign offspring is by using egg cues. Nevertheless, in egg-lay...

background: fluoxetine (prozactm) is one of the most popular antidepressant that can be released to aquatic systems via sewage-treatment effluents. it is suspected to provoke substantial effects in the aquatic environment. methods: in spawning tanks, specimens were exposed to concentrations of 0 and 0.54 µgl-1 fluoxetine from male introduction until the larvae had hatched. prior to spawning, ne...

Perceived certainty of paternity is expected to influence a male's behavior toward his offspring: if he is uncertain of his reproductive success with a current brood due to the presence of cuckolders, it may benefit him to invest instead in future reproduction. A decrease in perceived certainty of paternity incites filial cannibalism (the eating of one's own offspring) in some teleost fishes th...

Please cite this article in press as: Miller, J. Anisolabis maritima, Animal Behaviour (2012 Animals that provide parental care are expected to weigh the value of current offspring against the value of future offspring, such that total investment across all offspring is allocated to maximize lifetime fitness. In this study, we characterize the trade-offs associated with maternal care in the mar...