Does Divergence In Female Mate Choice Affect Male Size Distributions In Two Cave Fish Populations?

Main Category: Biology / Biochemistry
Also Included In: Veterinary
Article Date: 18 Jun 2008 - 7:00 PDT

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Female mate choice can maintain male traits that impose a cost in terms of natural selection. For example, in livebearing fish of the family Poeciliidae, females prefer to mate with large sized males, which take longer to mature and are more susceptible to predation than small males.

This leads to maintenance of male size variation in natural populations. We investigated female mate choice in two cave populations of the Atlantic molly (Poecilia mexicana).

Like surface relatives, females of both cave populations prefer large males as mates in light, but only in one of the caves females exhibit a mating preference for large males in darkness.

Accordingly, large males are absent in the cave lacking sexual selection for large males. Our results suggest that population differences in the potential for sexual selection may affect male trait variation.

Royal Society journal Biology Letters

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