Male Poecilia reticulata and their mating preferences

Abstract

In this experiment, we studied the reproductive patterns of male guppies (Poecilia reticulata). In our study, we questioned what physical characteristics would attract the male guppies to our 3-D models. We are studying the Poecilia reticula because they have very identifiable behaviors. Guppies are also sexually dimorphic, meaning they look different, so there will be a greater physical attraction to some sort of color or size difference. We hypothesized that the orange model will attract more guppies due to being bright in color, comparatively to the purple model We examined the data of reproductive traits towards two different 3-D models of female guppies. We chose to examine data from orange and purple models and compare how many seconds the male guppies spent on that side of the tank, their gonopodial swings, fanning behavior, sigmoid behavior, and the number of bites on the models. After examining the data we found that the purple model was more attractive to the guppies which proves our hypothesis incorrect.