Costs and benefits of breeding and parental care in cardinalfishes.

天竺鲷科广泛分布于热带和温带沃茨，被称为父口亲鱼。他们的性别角色通常是颠倒的，也就是说，女性是获得配偶的主要竞争者。在红雀鱼，男性和女性的生殖策略不同种间取决于他们的生态。1999年和2000年在日本四国岛室手海滩进行的实地研究中，我们的注意力集中在雌性斑天竺鲷产卵前两三个月形成的并在整个繁殖季节保持的领地的功能上。女性捍卫自己的领土的主要对手不是同种女性，但上学的男性。在产卵的那一刻，当卵块从雌性转移到雄性时，卵块经常被学校教育的雄性和濑鱼吃掉。这种食人的频率上升晚在繁殖季节的时候，人口中的学生比例增加。这些和其他结果表明，女性领土的主要功能是避免从学校的男性卵捕食。

Cardinalfishes (family Apogonidae) are distributed widely in tropical and temperate waters and known as paternal mouthbrooders. Their sex roles are usually reversed, that is, females are the primary competitors for access to mates. Among cardinalfishes, male and female strategies in reproduction differ interspecifically depending on their ecology. In the field research at Murote Beach, Shikoku, Japan, in 1999 and 2000, our attention focused on the function of territories of female Apogon notatus that are formed from two or three months before spawning and kept throughout the breeding season. Main opponents against which females defended their territories were not conspecific females but schooling males. At the moment of spawning when the egg mass was transferred from the female to the male, the mass was often eaten by schooling males and wrasses. The frequency of this cannibalism rose late in the breeding season when the proportion of schooling individuals in the population increased. These and other results indicated that the primary function of female territories is to avoid egg predation from schooling males.