Abstract
Interspecific brood parasitism has evolved repeatedly from parental care. However, many non-avian brood-parasitic lineages have ancestors lacking parental care, leaving the foundations of brood parasitism in these lineages enigmatic. We examine ecological, reproductive, and developmental data from the Lake Tanganyika radiation of Synodontis catfishes, where one species, the cuckoo catfish, exhibits brood parasitism of mouthbrooding cichlid fishes. Our comparative analyses, coupled with experimental parasitism, suggest that a combination of ancestral traits (large eggs and rapid embryo development) enabled the origin of brood parasitism. Evolutionary innovations then presumably enhanced the success of brood parasitism after it emerged. Novel traits comprise frequent production of small clutches to effectively utilize host availability, the evolution of egg mimicry to facilitate host egg adoption, and modifications to development to enhance the performance of catfish embryos in the host’s buccal cavity. Interestingly, despite the distinct ecological and life history contexts of the origin of catfish brood parasitism, its evolutionary and developmental outcomes align with those of canonical avian brood parasites. This suggests that general patterns are repeated in the evolution of brood parasitism, despite disparate starting conditions.
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Data availability
All trophic, reproductive, ontogenetic and experimental data generated in this study have been deposited in the Figshare database [https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.28646141] and are freely available. Source data are provided as a Source Data file. Raw ddRADseq reads have been deposited in NCBI’s Sequence Read Archive (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sra) (BioProject: PRJNA1132910) under accession numbers SAMN42360897–SAMN42360967. Source data are provided with this paper.
Code availability
The scripts to replicate all analyses reported in this study are available from Figshare [https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.28646141].
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Acknowledgements
We thank the Department of Fisheries in Mpulungu, especially Lwabanya Mabo, for facilitating research in Zambia, and Tanzanian Fisheries Research Institute in Kigoma, especially Deogratias P. Mulokozi, for facilitating research in Tanzania. The manuscript benefited from comments from Carl Smith, Lukáš Kratochvíl, Miranda Sherlock and four anonymous referees. This research was funded by the Czech Science Foundation (21-00788X to M.R.) and, in part, by the Austrian Science Fund (FWF) (doi.org/10.55776/J4584 to H.Z). For the purpose of open access, the authors have applied a CC BY public copyright license to any Author Accepted Manuscript version arising from this submission.
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Conceptualization: M.R., S.K., H.Z. Methodology: M.R., H.Z., R.B., K.P., J.Ž., R.C. Investigation: M.R., H.Z., R.B., T.S., M.P., G.E., V.B., K.P., J.Ž., L.K., I.D., S.K. Visualization: M.R., H.Z., T.S., G.E. Funding acquisition: M.R., H.Z. Project administration: M.R. Supervision: M.R. Writing – original draft: M.R., H.Z. Writing – review and editing: M.R, H.Z., R.B., T.S., M.P., G.E., V.B., K.P., J.Ž., L.K., I.D., R.C., S.K.
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Reichard, M., Blažek, R., Polačik, M. et al. The ecological and developmental foundations of brood parasitism in a catfish. Nat Commun (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71179-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-026-71179-4
