Paternal care

Mating system

Cichlid

Fish <Actinopterygii>

Mating

Transcriptome

Evolutionary biology

Biology

Zoology

Gene

Offspring

Gene expression

Sperm competition

Fishery

Sexual selection

Pregnancy

Genetics

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Social monogamy, typically characterized by the formation of a pair bond, increased territorial defense, and often biparental care, has independently evolved multiple times in animals. Despite the independent evolutionary origins of monogamous mating systems, several homologous brain regions and neuropeptides and their receptors have been shown to play a conserved role in regulating social affiliation and parental care, but little is known about the neuromolecular mechanisms underlying monogamy on a genomic scale. Here, we compare neural transcriptomes of reproductive males in monogamous and nonmonogamous species pairs of

Conserved transcriptomic profiles underpin monogamy across vertebrates