Male-male clasping may be part of an alternative reproductive tactic in Xenopus laevis.

Male-male clasping may be part of an alternative reproductive tactic in Xenopus laevis.

Blog Article

Male Xenopus laevis frogs have been observed to clasp other males in a sustained, amplectant position, the purpose of which is unknown.We examined three possible hypotheses for this counter-intuitive behavior: 1) clasping males fail to discriminate the sex of the frogs they clasp; 2) male-male clasping is an aggressive or dominant behavior; or 3) that males clasp other males to gain proximity to breeding events and possibly engage in sperm competition.Our data, gathered through a mohair torquay series of behavioral experiments in the laboratory, refute the first two hypotheses.We found hancheng fashion that males did not clasp indiscriminately, but showed a sex preference, with most males preferentially clasping a female, but a proportion preferentially clasping another male.

Males that clasped another male when there was no female present were less likely to "win" reproductive access in a male-male-female triad, indicating that they did not establish dominance through clasping.However, those males did gain proximity to oviposition by continued male-male clasping in the presence of the female.Thus, our findings are consistent with, but cannot confirm, the third hypothesis of male-male clasping as an alternative reproductive tactic.