---

Animalia >Chordata >Osteichthyes >Perciformes >Scaridae >Scarus >

In the first scene, flapping its pectoral fins up and down, a TP male is courting a female. You see its feces, a cloud of white particles. These particles are coral skeletons broken into powder (See also a video picture ¡ÆFeeding behavior of parrotfish¡Ç). The male then spawns with the female, which responded to his courtship (pair spawning). The TP male resumes courtship. It chases other individuals on and off during courtship. It then swims up with another female to spawn. At this moment, another fish dash to the spawning pair. This behavior is called streaking. In streaking, an IP male (see next paragraph), which has coloration similar to that of females, dashes to the spawning pair and releases sperm. You can see this behavior better at low tape speed. In the last scene, although a TP male is courting, flapping its pectoral fins up and down, a female is still remaining close to the bottom. The moment when the female finally swims up to spawn, fish dashes to the pair from the lower left. At low speed, you can see two IP males. After a streaking attempt by an IP male(s), TP males become very aggressive to the streaking IP male(s); however, until streaking does occur, TP males can not distinguish an IP male from a female.

TP males are males that are more brightly colored than females. There is another type of males, which is smaller than TP males and has coloration similar to that of females. The latter type of males is called initial-phase (IP) males. Existing reports state that parrotfishes spawn around the time of high tides. At Iriomote, however, they spawn most actively between 7 and 8 o¡Çclock in the morning. (translated by Asoh)

(Data No.momo060212sb01b)

Copyrights belong to author.
Read Terms of Service carefully

>>Japanese

[Database Home]