Abstract
Biparental care is favored when species are constrained by strong intra-sexual competition, or when two individuals are needed to defend a territory, or to feed or defend their young. In species employing biparental care, each individual must consider how much it is willing to invest and how much its partner will invest. The mouth of mouthbrooding cichlids provides a sufficiently safe location to raise offspring, yet, biparental mouthbrooding is relatively rare. A mouthbrooder has to decide between two forms of parental care: offspring defense or mouthbrooding. This research proposal aims to explore parental investment patterns when a pair of biparental mouthbrooding cichlid fishes are threatened by a model predator.