Addicted to Love: Does competition affect a male guppy’s response in courtship

Abstract

Sexual selection determines which individuals will reproduce more successfully. We tested whether or not competition will increase a female guppy’s attractiveness to a male guppy. We designed an experiment that placed two identical females in an environment with one live male guppy. One female was accompanied by a male guppy model, while the other female was left alone. We hypothesized the test subject would prefer the side with the female-male guppy model and would thus exhibit more sexual behaviors towards the female who was accompanied by the male. We made this hypothesis based on the concept of mate-choice copying, which theorizes individuals will choose mates that have already displayed reproductive competence with other mates. In contrast to these beliefs, we found that the male test subjects spent a majority of the experiment with the individual female model. We believe this may be due to the lack of competition and the lone model’s accessibility as a potential mate.