Journal
BIOLOGY LETTERS
Volume 6, Issue 1, Pages 55-58Publisher
ROYAL SOC
DOI: 10.1098/rsbl.2009.0637
Keywords
Gambusia; genital evolution; female choice; Poeciliidae; sexual selection
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Funding
- Australian Research Council
- ANU
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Sexual selection is a major force behind the rapid evolution of male genital morphology among species. Most within-species studies have focused on sexual selection on male genital traits owing to events during or after copulation that increase a male's share of paternity. Very little attention has been given to whether genitalia are visual signals that cause males to vary in their attractiveness to females and are therefore under pre-copulatory sexual selection. Here we show that, on average, female eastern mosquitofish Gambusia holbrooki spent more time in association with males who received only a slight reduction in the length of the intromittent organ ('gonopodium') than males that received a greater reduction. This preference was, however, only expressed when females chose between two large males; for small males, there was no effect of genital size on female association time.
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