Fatal fighting of a butterflyfish(17.5MB, 00:01:12)Shot Date: 1997/04/17 Shot Location: Kuroshima Is., Okinawa, Japan | ||
 | species Chaetodon lunulatus Key Words | |
|
Fatal fighting of a butterflyfish(17.5MB, 00:01:12)Shot Date: 1997/04/17 Shot Location: Kuroshima Is., Okinawa, Japan | ||
| species Chaetodon lunulatus Key Words | |
|
Animalia >Chordata >Osteichthyes >Perciformes >Chaetodontidae >Chaetodon >
The butterflyfish forms heterosexual pair bonds. Each pair defends a feeding territory against conspecifics. Almost all agonistic interactions are conventional fighting, in which attacking seldom occurs. Rarely, however, the interactions escalate to more dangerous stage: attacks occur frequently and results in serious outcomes.
This movie shows the escalated fighting between two males. Their territories were adjacent each other. One female was in the area including the two territories of the males. She defended the area against other females. Therefore, the two males neither could monopolize the female nor form a pair bond with another female. This unusual relation ship between one female and two males had been kept in a half years at least, and, at last, the fatal fighting occurred between the two males.
At first, they fought in conventional way, but both did not retreat. Then, fierce chasing occurred. The movie begins at the scene where one male chased the other and the two went over the small reef. When the camera caught up them, they spun quickly, as if two tops piled up. I call this behavior ˇŌTT-fightingˇÕ. At each end of TT-fighting, attacking occurred. The latter half of the movie shows TT-fighting at slow speed. You can see that physical attacks occurred at the end of the behavior.
As a result, both male were injured awfully and disappeared from the area. Probably, they died. After that, another male came into the territory that one of the two males had, to form a pair bond with the female over which the two male fought.
For more detailed description, see the following paper.
Yabuta S (2000) Behaviors in agonistic interaction of the butterflyfish (Chaetodon lunulatus). J Ethol 18: 11-15
For conventional fighting of the butterflyfish, see the movie ˇŌmomo010711c102aˇÕ in this database.
(Data No.momo010711cl02a)
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