Kin Recgonition in Fish and Amphibia

Kin Recognition in Fish and Amphibia

Fish (salmonids) are known to prefer the water occupied by sibs, even if they have had no prior contact with those sibs. Perhaps schooling is, as a generality, a non-random phenomenon (see amphibia, below); if so it would be interesting to revist the "selfish-herd"models. ) genotyped fish for an MHC locus and tested the fishes' water preferences, using water that had been exposed to a variety of sibling/MHC match possibilities (Olson et al. 1998).

Amphibian kin recognition is very similar to that in fish. Many schooling frog and toad tadpoles are known to prefer to school with sibs and choose water that has been exposed to sibs, even if the sibs are not familiar to the individual doing the choosing. Most current interest in amphibian kin recognition is related to cannibalism (see below). Blaustein and Waldman (1992) give a nice summary of the field.

Cannibalism. Eating your relatives has a very real inclusive fitness cost, perhaps even higher than if you mate with your relatives. Some salamanders (the tiger salamander) and toads (the spadefoot toad) have more than one tadpole morph; most tadpoles have normal, unappealing detrital amphibian feeding habits but some are carnivores (Pfennig et al. 1993). In the tiger salamanders, the frequency of the carnivore morph is dependent on the density of animals relative to their food supply, with the carnivore morph developing more frequently when food per animal is low.

Blaustein, A. R. and B. Waldman. 1992. Kin recognition in anuran amphibians. Anim. Behav. 44:207-221.

Olsen, K. H., M. Grahn, J. Lohm, and A. Langefors. 1998. MHC and kin discrimination in juvenile arctic charr, Salvelinus alpinus. Anim. Behav. 56:319-327.

Pfennig, D. W., H. K. Reeve, and P. W. Sherman 1993. Kin recognition and cannibalism in spadefoot toad tadpoles. Anim. Behav. 46:87-94.