1. Killifish eggs can disperse via gut passage through waterfowl.
- Author
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Silva, Giliandro G., Weber, Vinícius, Green, Andy J., Hoffmann, Pedro, Silva, Vanessa S., Volcan, Matheus V., Lanés, Luis Esteban K., Stenert, Cristina, Reichard, Martin, and Maltchik, Leonardo
- Subjects
KILLIFISHES ,EGGS ,WATERFOWL ,EVOLUTIONARY developmental biology ,WATER birds ,FISH eggs ,AQUATIC invertebrates - Abstract
We discovered an alternative mode to waterbird-facilitated dispersal of fish eggs - inside the alimentary system of coscoroba swan (form of endozoochory) - and experimentally demonstrated that killifish eggs from bird feces were capable of continuing their development after spending over 30 h inside a swan (Fig.). Hence, we experimentally tested whether killifish eggs can survive passage through waterfowl (Anatidae) guts and if endozoochory can be a mode of fish egg dispersal. We used 650 killifish eggs from captive breeding (Appendix S1) of two annual killifish species (350 I Austrolebias minuano i , Fig. [Extracted from the article]
- Published
- 2019
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