Territorial Behaviour of Tropheus moorei (Osteichthyes: Cichlidae) With a Preliminary Consideration on the Territorial Forms in Animals

Abstract

Kawanabe. H. (Dept. Zool.. Fac. Sci.. Kyoto Univ, Kyoto). 1981. Territorial behaviour of Tropheus moorei (Osteichthyes: Cichlidae) with a preliminary consideration on the territorial forms in animals. Afr. Stud. Monogr., I: 101-108. The territory has been usually defined as "any defended area" and believed to be so done originally by Noble (1939). As he wrote clearly on the paper, however, the feeding and the mating (inluding both sexual and nesting) territories are completely different each other from functional points of view. especially as a self-regulatory mechanisms in population density. An algal grazing cichlid, Tropheus moorei Boulenger, had a typical and characteristic form of the feeding territory in a rocky shore in Lake Tanganyika, defending all over the territorial area against every invader of the same species and of some other algal grazing ones. Further precise examinations to territorial forms in animals with relation to their functions are suggested in general.