Monday, February 13, 2012

Three Seas Panama 2012: Hamlets spawning II

Drs. Clare Wormald and Mia Adreani have just finished teaching the Biology and Ecology of Fishes class.

We, along with the Three Seas students, had some great opportunities to study a diversity of fishes on the reefs around the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute at Bocas del Toro. We observed a variety of behaviors, like territoriality, mating systems, feeding and swimming behaviors of coral reef fishes and studied ecological processes, including the recent lionfish invasion, and the interaction of fishes and their habitats which include coral reefs and the locally abundant mangrove systems. 

Here the students are speeding back from a dive studying the mating systems of a simultaneous hermaphrodite, the hamlet (Hypoplectrus sp.). Around dusk, hamlets pair up and engage in "egg trading", taking turns in both the female and male roles during their spawning bouts. Here's a short video clip of the spawning behavior.

Three Seas Panama 2012: Hamlets spawning



Link

Saturday, February 4, 2012

Three Seas Panama 2012: Territoriality experiment

"Model-bottle" experiments introduce an intruder species in a container into a focal fish's territory. A territory holder, Stegastes planifrons, responds by display, chasing and biting at the intruder fish. The territory holder's display includes color changes, fin and body position displays. We might expect a strong response of the territory holder to a conspecific intruder because they have complete resource overlap.