Good news - Peru poison frog reveals secret of monogamy :)

http://news.bbc.co.uk/earth/hi/earth_news/newsid_8524000/8524558.stm

"The first monogamous amphibian has been discovered living in the rainforest of South America. Genetic tests have revealed that male and females of one species of Peruvian poison frog remain utterly faithful."

"After mating, a female mimic poison frog lays her eggs on the surface of leaves. The male frog then takes away the tadpoles that hatch, carrying them one by one on his back to pools of water which collect in bromeliad leaves high up in the branches of trees. Each of half a dozen babies are put into their own tiny pool, which he then looks after. When the tadpoles become hungry, the male calls to his female partner who arrives to lay a non-fertile egg in each pool, which the tadpole eats as food."

"Many animals appear to be monogamous, with males and females forming pairs that can often last a lifetime. But the recent explosion in genetic analyses has revealed many of these so-called monogamous relationships to be a sham. While many animals might stay together and breed, they will often sneak off and cheat on their partners when they get a chance."

"Their tadpoles cannot survive without the care of both their father and mother, as there is too little natural food in their smaller pools. So the adult frogs stick together."

"Overall, the researchers believe they have found convincing evidence of an evolutionary chain of causation: changing the breeding pool size forced the mimic poison frog to change its system of parental care, with males and females working together. That then culminated in social and genetic monogamy. If the (tadpoles') pools were bigger (so there would be enough natural food available), the frogs wouldn't have to remain faithful, as they wouldn't be tied by their need to work together to raise their brood."

Anthropomorphizing here a bit, aren't we? In short, we take a human-created "virtue" and praise a frog for having it naturally.

other frogs. This species has to stay together because they raise their young in such small pools that they wouldn't survive if the parents weren't both around during their tadpole stage. Most frogs lay eggs in large pools with plenty of natural food. Their tadpoles thrive in these larger pools without any help from mom and dad. There's no evolutionary advantage to most frog parents sticking together so they don't.

"faithful". It implies that there is a behavioral choice component to how this frog has evolved that is not similarly implied by the word "monogamous".

I wasn't commenting on you, but on the choice of words that the author of this piece used. I despise when non-biologists use words to describe animal behavior in ways that imply that one naturally-selected trait is somehow more "virtuous" than others.

So what they're saying is that if, as humans, we didn't have any time or opportunity to be unfaithful we'd b monogamous too? M'kay... Pass

Someone should have told me.

That has a certain appeal, I must say.

Family values!