May 17, 2005

  • Birds do it.   Bees do it.  Yeah, even Fish do it.


    "A male with a larger gonopodium (guess?!) has a higher chance of mating, but in a predator environment he has a higher probability of dying," Langerhans said. "That's the cost, the tradeoff. On the other hand, we found that in predator-free environments gonopodia size was larger, as there is minimal cost for large genitalia in that environment. Bigger is better for mating, but smaller is better for avoiding predation."

    Why?       The smaller-endowed males out-compete the larger-endowed males in a predator-laden environment because they have a faster burst speed than the males with larger genitalia, who lose out because the size of their organ slows them down, making them ripe for capture by larger fish.

    (mwuahaha..sorry. I crack up everytime I read this)

    Sex, lies and videotape

    Langerhans     even got female selection on film. He examined the mating preference of about 50 mosquitofish (guppy-like fish) females, where each female was placed in an aquarium having two videos playing side-by-side at one end of the aquarium. One video was of a male mosquitofish with an average gonopodium; the other was of a male with a 15 percent larger one. This forced a female to make a pre-mating sexual selection. After testing each individual and devoting over 1,000 minutes of observation, Langerhans found that it wasn't even close.

    "They chose the larger one over and over," Langerhans said. "All females had the same preference."

     -     PhysOrg.com

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