ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2010
Brooding fathers, not siblings, take up nutrients from embryos.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2010. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed.
- Sexual Selection on Non-Ornamental Traits Is Underpinned by Evidence of Genetic Constraints on Sex-Biased Expression in Dusky Pipefish.Molecular ecology · 2025Article
- Mom and dad are not that different after all: Immune modulation as a prerequisite for the evolution of pregnancy.Molecular ecology · 2023Article
- Reduced sexual size dimorphism in a pipefish population where males do not prefer larger females.Ecology and evolution · 2019Article
- When more is not merrier: Using wild population dynamics to understand the effect of density on ex situ seahorse mating behaviors.PloS one · 2019Article
- The 'Woman in Red' effect: pipefish males curb pregnancies at the sight of an attractive female.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2018Article
- Evolutionary ecology of pipefish brooding structures: embryo survival and growth do not improve with a pouch.Ecology and evolution · 2016Article
- Within species support for the expensive tissue hypothesis: a negative association between brain size and visceral fat storage in females of the Pacific seaweed pipefish.Ecology and evolution · 2016Article
- Article
- The evolutionary puzzle of egg size, oxygenation and parental care in aquatic environments.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2015Article
- The effects of food limitation on life history tradeoffs in pregnant male gulf pipefish.PloS one · 2015Article
- Functional similarity and molecular divergence of a novel reproductive transcriptome in two male-pregnant Syngnathus pipefish species.Ecology and evolution · 2013Article
- Spermatophore consumption in a cephalopod.Biology letters · 2013Article
- Evolutionary biology: pregnant fathers in charge.Nature · 2010Article
- Post-copulatory sexual selection and sexual conflict in the evolution of male pregnancy.Nature · 2010Article
- Pipefish embryo oxygenation, survival, and development: egg size, male size, and temperature effects.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
It is well known that many animals with placenta-like structures provide their embryos with nutrients and oxygen. However, we demonstrate here that nutrients can pass the other way, from embryos to the parent. The study was done on a pipefish, Syngnathus typhle, in which males brood fertilized eggs in a brood pouch for several weeks. Earlier research has found a reduction of embryo numbers during the brooding period, but the fate of the nutrients from these 'reduced' embryos has been unknown. In this study, we considered whether (i) the brooding male absorbs the nutrients, (ii) siblings absorb them, or (iii) a combination of both. Males were mated to two sets of females, one of which had radioactively labelled eggs (using (14)C-labelled amino acids), such that approximately half the eggs in the brood pouch were labelled. This allowed us to trace nutrient uptake from these embryos. We detected that (14)C-labelled amino acids were transferred to the male brood pouch, liver and muscle tissue. However, we did not detect any significant (14)C-labelled amino-acid absorption by the non-labelled half-siblings in the brood pouch. Thus, we show, to our knowledge, for the first time, that males absorb nutrients derived from embryos through their paternal brood pouch.
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