Bedlam: A Male Guppies Mating Choices, Red vs Orange

Abstract

Research done by the Center for the Study of Sexual Selection in Fishes (CS3F) and other researchers has been on female sexual selection in guppies. We studied the effect of female coloration on male guppy mate selection. A study by Francis et al. (2015) found that male guppies prefer females that have a warm coloration. We hypothesized that a male guppy would prefer a red female over an orange female because red has a longer wavelength than orange. This was tested through repeated exposure to different models and comparing the attraction to each model by measuring time spent with each model. Our results were inconclusive, we found that there was no significant attraction differences between orange fish and red fish.