Body size influences many life-history traits, with small-bodied animals tending to have short life spans, high mortality and greater reproductive effort early in life. In this study, the authors investigated the life-history traits and reproductive strategies of three small-bodied coral reef gobies of the genus Trimma: Trimma benjamini, Trimma capostriatum and Trimma yanoi. The authors found all Trimma species studied attained a small body size of <25 mm, had a short life span of <140 days and experienced high estimated daily mortality of 3.0%-6.7%. Furthermore, the pelagic larval phase accounted for 25.3%-28.5% of the maximum life span, and maturation occurred between 74.1 and 82.1 days at 15.2-15.8 mm, leaving only 35%-43% of the total life span as a reproductively viable adult. All mature individuals had gonad structures consistent with bidirectional sex change, with bisexual gonads including both ovarian and testicular portions separated by a thin wall of connective tissue. In the female and male phases, only ovaries or testes were mature, whereas gonadal tissue of the non-active sex remained. One T. benjamini individual and one T. yanoi individual had ovarian and testicular tissue active simultaneously. The results of this study highlight the life-history challenges small CRFs face on their path to reproduction and reproductive strategies that could be beneficial in fishes with high and unpredictable mortality and short reproductive life spans.
The Developing Belief Network is a global research collaborative studying religious development in diverse social-cultural settings, with a focus on the intersection of cognitive mechanisms and cultural beliefs and practices in early and middle childhood. The current manuscript describes the study protocol for the network's second wave of data collection, which aims to further explore the development and diversity of religious cognition and behavior using a multi-time point approach. This protocol is designed to investigate three key research questions-how children represent and reason about religious and supernatural agents, how children represent and reason about religion as an aspect of social identity, and how religious and supernatural beliefs are transmitted within and between generations-via a set of eight tasks for children between the ages of 5 and 13 years and a survey completed by their parents/caregivers. This study is being conducted in 41 distinct cultural-religious settings, spanning 16 countries and 12 written languages. In this manuscript, we provide detailed descriptions of all elements of this study protocol, and give a brief overview of the ways in which this protocol has been adapted for use in diverse religious communities. As one example of how this protocol has been implemented outside of the United States, we present Arabic- and English-language study materials for children being raised in one of the following religious traditions in Lebanon: the Druze faith, Maronite Christianity, Orthodox Christianity, Shia Islam, or Sunni Islam. We end with reflections on the challenges of developing and implementing large-scale, multi-site, multi-time point studies of child development; our approach to navigating these challenges; and our suggestions for how future researchers might learn from our experiences and build on the work presented here.