Embryonic survival and larval predator-avoidance ability in mutually ornamented whitefish

Mutual ornamentation (i.e. the expression of secondary sexual characters) in both sexes is a relatively common but rarely studied phenomenon in the animal kingdom. In the present study, we investigated whether mutual ornamentation is indicative of offspring embryonic survival and predator-avoidance ability in whitefish. We crossed ten randomly selected females and ten randomly selected males in all possible combinations resulting in 100 sib groups, and hypothesized that fitness (measured as offspring survival) of elaborately ornamented parents would be higher in both sexes of whitefish. Parental effects were found in both studied traits: effects of female and female–male interaction were si…