New definition to "Big'uns"?

[VietVet68]

This is one of those things that I stumbled across, and wish I hadn't. I'm wondering if this gives a whole new meaning to the definition of "Big'uns"?
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Fish Genital Size Matters for Sexual Attraction, Natural Selection
By Qingqing Ho
May 15, 2005, 11:04



New Haven, Conn. May 14 - For certain fish species to survive, the male genitalia should be large enough to attract the females, and small enough to escape predators, stated a study presented in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The study was to find the female sexual preference and male swimming performance in two species of mosquitofish -Western and Bahamas mosquitofish.

In the study, researchers analyzed the gonopodia (modified fin) in the mosquitofish that transfer sperm to females. Mosquitofish can not retract their gonopodia and they swing them during courtship.

Researchers concluded that the females preferred to spend time watching videos of males displaying digitally enlarged gonopodia rather than those with average-size gonopodia. This indicates that a larger gonopodium is the female sexual preference.

However, larger gonopodia make the males more susceptible to predation, because the males with larger gonopodia swim slower.

"Our results suggest that both mating selection, favoring larger genitalia, and natural selection, favoring reduced size, may direct evolution and diversification of genitals," said Layman, co-author of the study.

The study was conducted by Craig A. Layman in Yale University, and colleagues Brian Langerhans at Washington University and Thomas J. Dewitt at Texas A&M University.

[crap-king]

My question is did we spend tax money to do this study and how much did we spend - I guess it makes as much sense as some government studies though

[Billbob]

your tax dollars at work

[shadow]

Sounds like a good aggie joke to me!

[fiddlefarter]

Hmmm...this could relate to humans. If one could only convince females that if things were different one would swim slower and get eaten...Thoughts to ponder.

[Roberta]

And why. The information only pertains to livebearers, so it doesn't have any wide application, even though there are many types of mosquito fish (guppies, swordtails, etc.) . The pan and gamefish we target are all egg layers, so the male doesn't have the modified gonopodia. And here, I thought the attraction in male guppies was the big flashy tailfin.
-Roberta

[MastaFisher]

The attraction to male guppies also has to do with the color and the size of the fins of the fish. The problem still being that the brighter fish are easier for the the predators to find. I have seen this happen in a tank with multiple male and female guppies.

[CrappieLips]

My sentiment's exactly CRAP-KING.