Finding Love: Do Male Guppies Prefer Warm or Cool Colored Mates?

Abstract

 Are male guppies more attracted to females that are brighter in color? We hypothesize that male guppies will display a higher number of sexual behaviors toward the cool-colored guppy models, because the color reflects a shorter wavelength of light, therefore making the fish more visually stimulating. We measured the number of times the live guppy displayed certain sexual behaviors toward various guppy models. We compared each experimental group, orange and green guppy models, to the control group, the gray model. We found that the guppy was primarily attracted to the control model instead of either the orange or green experimental models. These findings did not support our hypothesis.