ArticleBiology letters2015
A complex mode of aggressive mimicry in a scale-eating cichlid fish.
Article in Biology letters, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers.
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Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 22 citations in OpenAlex.
- Genetic structure and historical demography of inland wetland fish using the endangered Lisbon arched-mouth nase as a case-study.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Deceptive Seduction byInsects · 2024Article
- Expression variations in ectodysplasin-A gene (eda) may contribute to morphological divergence of scales in haplochromine cichlids.BMC ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Understanding explosive diversification through cichlid fish genomics.Nature reviews. Genetics · 2018Review
- Crab Spider Lures Prey In Flowerless Neighborhoods.Scientific reports · 2017Article
- Community assembly in Lake Tanganyika cichlid fish: quantifying the contributions of both niche-based and neutral processes.Ecology and evolution · 2017Article
- Article
- The behavioral origins of novelty: did increased aggression lead to scale-eating in pupfishes?Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 2 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Aggressive mimicry is an adaptive tactic of parasitic or predatory species that closely resemble inoffensive models in order to increase fitness via predatory gains. Although similarity of distantly related species is often intuitively implicated with mimicry, the exact mechanisms and evolutionary causes remain elusive in many cases. Here, we report a complex aggressive mimicry strategy in Plecodus straeleni, a scale-eating cichlid fish from Lake Tanganyika, which imitates two other cichlid species. Employing targeted sequencing on ingested scales, we show that P. straeleni does not preferentially parasitize its models but—contrary to prevailing assumptions—targets a variety of co-occurring dissimilar looking fish species. Combined with tests for visual resemblance and visual modelling from a prey perspective, our results suggest that complex interactions among different cichlid species are involved in this mimicry system.
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