Filial Cannibalism by Male Fish as an Infanticide to Restart Courtship by Self-Regulating Androgen Levels

Parental care is costly for animal parents [1-3], who often desert, abort, or kill their offspring and sometimes even eat them-so-called filial cannibalism [1, 4]. A primary adaptive hypothesis for filial cannibalism centers on the expected nutritional benefits from eating offspring (the energy-based [EB] hypothesis [5-7]). However, many empirical studies are inconsistent with the EB hypothesis [8, 9]. One notable case is total filial...