Re: A.nijsseni fem. Flank Patch

[Kathy Olson <kathy@thekrib.com>]

Max,

I had noticed my very prominent one spot females rule the tank and the no
spot (on one side )  lose out if there is more than one female in a tank.

For awhile I was going to try and consistently do a two spot tank, but
used it up for a new species.  Now with my last 3 spawns there have been
no two spot females.

I think there may be something to it....need more research and data
collection on that one.  But cool observation.

Kathy


On Wed, 1 Mar 2000, Max Gallade wrote:

> Hi all,
> I like to pick the collective brain on this:
> I'm keeping  a trio of A.nijsseni in a large heavily planted tank, 75g.They
> bred several times for me and the first spawn is 120 days old now.I have 4
> females from the first spawn.2 fem.without any side blotches,1
> fem.w.blotches on both sides,1fem.with only one blotch on the right side of
> her body.One of the adult female has two!! side blotches on the right side
> of her body and only one on the left.The second blotch on the right side
> looks like a faded black rectangle and is smaller in size than the regular
> blotch.Let me call
> her fem1.The other adult fem.has two side blotches=fem2.
> I noticed that the fem1. became the dominant fem. and occupied a large area
> in the middle of the tank.My male spends most of his time around her and her
> fry(they always have youngens).Once in a while he sneaks over two fem2,
> which took up quarters in a small corner of the tank,swims around for a
> short time and immediately heads back to fem1 and her fry.He spawned with
> fem2 several times as well.
> Fem2 doesn't even go near fem1 but chases away any other DC that comes near
> her territory.
> I noticed similar behavior in my juvenile fem..The ones with two side
> blotches are more dominant than the ones without any patches and are not
> bothered by the other juvenile females.
> I suspect that the patches resemble some sort of ranking among the group of
> fish.A males chooses the dominant females to breed with and lower ranks stay
> away from them.
> I saw a good example of this theory on Richard Attenborough's Life of Birds
> series on PBS:
> Common Sparrows have a rank system like that.The birds with the brightest
> and biggest black chest patch are the highest ranked birds=Generals.
> The birds without any patches are the lowest in the pecking order=Soldiers.
> The Generals always get first choice over food,nesting grounds,females and
> resting areas.
> What y'all think?
> Max
> 
> 
> 
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