Greater Pipefish, S.acus (notes)
>Baby Greater Pipefish are described in various books as returning to
the
>male's pouch if they feel threatened in the first few days after first
>emerging. This sounded plausible until I thought about how tiny
they are
>and how inefficiently even the adults swim, and began to wonder whether
they
>could actually make it back to dad if they were more than a couple
of
inches
>away. But I have no direct experience of baby pipefish, so that is
just
>speculation.
>
>Has anyone who has bred Greater Pipefish seen the young returning
to the
>pouch after they first emerge? Or has anyone seen the behaviour of
newly
>emerged babies often enough to be fairly sure that they don't do this?
>
>Jane Lilley
>
> Hi Jane..... I wrote an article published
called ' When Mum was a Dad'
in Glaucus, spring of '95 about this very subject...It all occured
in 1993
actually. I caught two already pregnant males
and they hatched out their
young during the end of May that year... I had to re-read the article
to
remember the details, but I made no mention in the story of them re-entering
the pouch. As far as my memory serves me I don't
think they did ! I
seem to remember them swimming off quite confidently, although
they are
only as thin as a hair from ones head, although they do thicken quite
rapidly over a few weeks. They were not
all born together ( as would be
expected ) but continued to appear from the pouch over a period of
two
weeks... Of course I obviously had these fish in isolation in a 4 foot
aquarium, feeding Newly hatched brine shrimp to the babies and
adult mysids
to the parents......... Would the situation of the babies and the pouch
have
been different if there had been danger in the tank, as there would
be in
the wild. Maybe.... I can't answer that one.... but
I do remember them
all over the tank and not hanging round DAD as might have been expected.
Cheers Jim
>