Cannibalism, competition, and costly care in the plainfin midshipman fish, Porichthys notatus

Caring for offspring is energetically expensive, and when the costs of care are sufficiently high, the use of cost-reducing strategies can be favored. Such strategies may include the avoidance of nest construction through nest take-over and the restoration of depleted energy reserves through offspring cannibalism. Despite extensive theoretical and empirical work on parental care, neither the actual energetic costs of care nor the putative …