Skip Navigation



Behavioral Ecology Advance Access published online on May 6, 2008
Behavioral Ecology, doi:10.1093/beheco/arn043
This Article
Right arrow Full Text
Right arrow Full Text (PDF)
Right arrow Lay Summary
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to My Personal Archive
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Gabor, C. R.
Right arrow Articles by Aspbury, A. S.
PubMed
Right arrow Articles by Gabor, C. R.
Right arrow Articles by Aspbury, A. S.
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us  
What's this?

© The Author 2008. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Non-repeatable mate choice by male sailfin mollies, Poecilia latipinna, in a unisexual-bisexual mating complex

Caitlin R. Gabor and Andrea S. Aspbury

Department of Biology, Texas State University-San Marcos, San Marcos, TX 78666, USA

Address correspondence to C.R. Gabor. E-mail: gabor{at}txstate.edu.


  Abstract

Most studies of repeatability examine female mate choice, but male mate choice may have significant evolutionary consequences when males of a sexual species are sexually parasitized by heterospecific gynogenetic females as is the case for sailfin mollies, Poecilia latipinna. Amazon mollies, Poecilia formosa, are all female gynogens that require sperm from P. latipinna for initiation of embryogenesis, but inheritance is strictly maternal. We examined repeatability and consistency of male mate choice for female sailfin versus Amazon mollies in a series of 4 experiments. We measured male association preference for 1) size-matched female sailfin versus Amazon mollies, 2) smaller female sailfin mollies versus larger Amazon mollies, and 3) larger female sailfin mollies versus smaller Amazon mollies. We also examined 4) actual male mate choice for size-matched sailfin versus Amazon mollies. Male mate preference was not repeatable in any of our studies, and male sailfin mollies were consistent in their mate preference for conspecific females over heterospecific females only when the conspecific female was larger than the Amazon and when males could actually mate with females of both species. In all experiments, males that showed the highest conspecific preference also showed the most consistency in their preference across the 2 days of testing. The lack of repeatability of male mate preference may contribute to the persistence of Amazon mollies.

Key words: Amazon molly, gynogenetic, live-bearing fish, Poecilia formosa, species recognition.

Received 1 August 2007; revised 12 March 2008; accepted 13 March 2008.


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us    What's this?




Disclaimer:
Please note that abstracts for content published before 1996 were created through digital scanning and may therefore not exactly replicate the text of the original print issues. All efforts have been made to ensure accuracy, but the Publisher will not be held responsible for any remaining inaccuracies. If you require any further clarification, please contact our Customer Services Department.