mouth brooder

oral brooder (a fish which broods or protects the eggs (ovophile) or young (larvophile) by taking them into the mouth). This reproductive guild (q.v.) includes those fish that mouth brood without buccal feeding and those that buccal feed the embryos. The former incubate eggs in the buccal cavity of the male, the female or both sexes, the eggs are large, spherical or oval, with dense yolk, are churned in the cavity or are densely packed with well-developed respiratory plexuses aided by endogenous oxidative metabolism of carotenoids, embryos do not feed externally in the buccal cavity, and large young are released, e.g. Apogon imberbis, Oreochromis mossambicus. The latter have fewer and larger eggs and early hatching embryos with a large yolk which feed on particles inhaled by the female, e.g. Arius falcarius, Cyphotilapia frontosa