Are the Donec Fish Faithful to Their Mates?

[zee113]

Are the Donec Fish Faithful to Their Mates?
A study by Zee113

Does is matter if a creature has a permanent mate or are their mating habits independent of mating pairs? I have always thought that permanent mating pairs are fond of each other and it effects their breeding success. In this experiment I will examine whether this idea is true or false.

The experiment was conducted with the participation of the Donec Fish since I have extensive breeding notes on them over a long period of time. In this document I recorded all the breedings of my Donec Fish. It starts with the summary and the raw data is in the last tab. In between, there are the case studies. I excluded those fish that bred less than 50 times because the more data, the better the statistics.

Case study number one: Allie
Allie's mating pair is Ace. Their breeding success rate is 88,5%, while Allie bred with randoms gives a 66,7% success rate. Allie is definitely one to support my claim that Donec Fish are faithful to their mating pairs which shows in her breeding rate as well.

Case study number two: Bubbler
Bubbler gave an inconsequential answer because she was never bred with anyone else but her mating pair, Bumba. Their breeding success rate is 85,5%. However, Bubbler's success rate is featured in the summary so her breedings were not inconsequential after all.

Case study number three: Cookie
Cookie's case gives the first sign of my theory maybe being built hastily. Cookie's breeding succes with her mate is 91,1%. But she has a wandering eye and her breeding success with random males is a 100%. Egad, Cookie!

Case study number four: Daffy
Daffy is another female Donec Fish with a wandering eye. Maybe Allie was the outlier? Maybe Allie's breeding rates with her mate and randoms are not even typical? Whatever happened, Daffy's breeding rate is 86,5% with her mate, Dilbert, while with randoms it is 100%. Maybe I named Dilbert poorly? Maybe Daffy would be more faithful to a Dominic or a Dean?

Case study number five: Evina
Evina rounds up the number of unfaithful female Donec Fish. She, too, is better at breeding with random males than her handsome beau, Elmer. While her breeding success rate with Elmer is the highest of the five, 96,2%, her success rate with others is 100% as well as the others with their wandering eyes. Ladies, I am disappointed.

Case study number six: random unnamed pairs
This is the case study that features only 29 breedings but I wanted to include one case where there are no set mating pairs but random breedings. Unfortunately it turned out that I do not have statistics on the breeding habits of random unnamed pairs, I have the same unnamed female Donec Fish mated several times. This unnamed female has a 90,2% success rate with her regular mating partner, and 100% success with Dilbert. So Dilbert is not that silly a name, after all.

In the Summary, I calculated the average of the breeding successes of the two categories, and it turns out that the average breeding success of permanent pairs is 89,56%, while the breeding success of random Donec Fish pairs is 91,96%. The difference might be small but it definitely disproves my theory of Donec Fish being faithful to their mates. Or maybe they are but they like to have an affair every once in a while. I am honestly disappointed in my school of Donec Fish. On the other hand, they are good breeders, so I am happy for them. Maybe I should not pay too much attention to their breeding habits, just enjoy the resulting number of hatchlings.