No one told my H. reidi about that. Right now I have 4 males & 1 female. 3 of the males have given births and I think the last male it pregant. In my H. zosterae tank, they swap partners all of the time.
Tim
What's funny about that is that while I've had this article brewing in my head for a very long time; I recently saw some news articles that repeatedly claimed H. zosterae mate for life and my own experiences are more in line with yours and it just bugged the heck o
I't my thought that the confined quarters changes their natural habits for mating from what it would normally be in the wild.
That being said, I lost a male angustus and when I purchased another one, the female never even looked at the new male and eventually she died also about a year later.
I strongly suspect that is at least partially the case. We keep seahorses in much denser populations then they occur in the wild, with perhaps the breeding groups that H. abdominalis and H. breviceps. But of the few studies done of seahorse breeding behavior in the wild, most show less than faithful behavior. What I really wish we'd see is more studies into the different species mating habits, because I suspect they just plan vary a lot and one blanket statement can't be made about the entire genus.
Interesting anecdote about your H. angustus. Particularly so because even of the seahorses that showed some sort of long term pair bonding, they all would seek out new mates rather quickly if they lost their existing mate. But, H. angustus hasn't been studied as far as I know so its really impossible to say if they might be different than the ones studied thus far. More haven't been studied than have unfortunately.
namxas & peka, my experiences have been similar too when I've have more than single pairs. I have more pairs seperated than bigger groups, but in the cases where I have more than two its pretty flexible. Though as rayjay points out, it could be a symptom of captivity.
Interestingly, a number of years ago I had a number of pairs of reidi together, all wild caught, that never really strayed from one another. But it can't be that they'd never find new mates since, being adult when they were collected; and some of the males even pregnant, that its pretty sure they were separated from their mates.
