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multiple paternity frogspawn? |
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will
Senior Member Joined: 27 Feb 2007 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 1830 |
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Posted: 16 Mar 2014 at 6:04pm |
Just a thought as I was watching the 'frorgy' in my garden pond today - I saw several females lay their eggs and immediately the small clump of eggs was jumped on by satellite males, once the pair had swum off. Were they trying to fertilise at least some of the eggs after the male in amplexus had had his go?
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GemmaJF
Admin Group Joined: 25 Jan 2003 Location: Essex Status: Offline Points: 4359 |
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Interesting tactic! Has any research been done on it? I've got some very vague memory of reading something on this in the past. Possibly with mention of chemicals in the true father sperm to suppress the sperm of other males, though I might be making that up as I really can't put my finger on where I read it.
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will
Senior Member Joined: 27 Feb 2007 Location: United Kingdom Status: Offline Points: 1830 |
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I put the Q up on the fieldherping website for Euroherpers, and got a link to a paper which did indeed suggest multiple paternity in some clumps of frogspawn (paper dated 2008), which ties in with my observations that the lone male frogs all piled onto the spawn once the incumbent male and his partner had moved off. Perhaps this only happens as and when the male frogs greatly outnumber the females, as has been the case in my pond this year (c 150 males to 30-40 females - almost toadlike!) I reckon there are still females on land which have been stopped from migrating to the pond due to cold dry nights over the last ten days or so, forcing the lone males into this unusual behaviour. So much more to learn!!
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