Comments on: Pregnant male pipefish abort babies from unattractive females

By: Blackbird

Blackbird — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 23:45:28 +0000

Cook stuff! I don’t think that the presence of aminoacids from the offspring proves anything though. The males presumably have to process the excreta of the growing embryos and this will include proteins too. Even cells from your kids – if you are a female, obviously – stay with you after pregnancies, but that does not imply human females are cannibalistic. Embryos also could die from natural causes (malformations, inbreeding, etc) and efficient dealing with such dead embryos, such as reabsorption, would be advantageous both for the male (recycling of resources) and for the growing young (decreasing the chances of infection). I am not sure how the pouch works though!

By: Nathan Myers

Nathan Myers — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 12:15:08 +0000

I’m keying off of “If males aren’t satisfied with the quality of their mate, they could simply restrict this flow of nutrients from their own body…” That depends on the male either remembering something about who the eggs came from, or noticing something about the eggs themselves. We know that one such thing is that there are more of them. Maybe they’re bigger, too. Whatever it is, if his daughters are small, both they and their eggs will be discriminated against. So, maybe with fewer eggs to care for, he cares for them less well, to have more resources left for the eggs of the next mate, who might be bigger?

By: Ed Yong

Ed Yong — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 02:46:09 +0000

Nathan, do you mean the fact that the last pregnancy affects the current one? No memory required – it could just be that after a pregnancy with high brood survivorship, males simply don’t have enough energy to carry another full brood to term. Your sensory hypothesis is possible too.

By: Gunnar

Gunnar — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 00:10:24 +0000

Cool!

By: Nathan Myers

Nathan Myers — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 23:34:09 +0000

Does this imply that the pipefishes remember something about who they mated with? That is a little bit hard to believe. Or are they responding to a discernable quality of the eggs they’re carrying?

By: B

Wed, 17 Mar 2010 23:27:23 +0000

Awesome!

By: karen

karen — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:31:30 +0000

Ha, I had just watched this vid on Nature youtube channel and was lamenting the fact that I don’t have a subscription to read the original research. But popping over the NERS I find all the hard work done for me and nice summary of the paper presented, thanks Ed!

By: Travis

Travis — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 19:44:01 +0000

Maybe I hang out over at PZ’s place to much but as soon as I saw that the father will both abort and eat babies I started to think that he was the perfect atheist, at least in the minds of some (not me of course, I am a long time abortionist and baby eater).