Positive Effects of Color with Male Sexual Selection

Abstract

 Sexual selection is an intensely studied topic. The female guppy is known to be attracted by colorful male to increase fitness. But are male guppies attracted to colorful females? So we would like to study the effects of color with male sexual selection. We have decided to test the male’s attraction to brightly colored females. We hypothesize that the male guppy is more attracted to the colorful female because the characteristics draw the male’s attention. The male fish was exposed to two female models. One was our control (gray) and the other was a changing variable (orange and yellow) which is the independent variable. We found that the male guppy is more attracted to brightly colored females, furthermore the orange female model was more attractive than the yellow model. For the male to choose a colorful female fish because the bright colors are more attractive than a dull colors. This could benefit because it would make its offspring more colorful and have more opportunity to reproduce and increase its fitness. With our observations the results support our hypothesis and male guppies are more attracted to colorful females.