Andrew Kahn is researching how a square meal can help male mosquitofish hook that special lady. Photo by Tegan Dolstra.
A good upbringing can make you more attractive to females - if you are a mosquitofish, that is. Researchers from The Australian National University have shown that female mosquitofish prefer males who had a solid nutritional upbringing, even if the males are superficially identical to their poorly-fed brothers. Their findings are published online today in Biology Letters. "Males similar in body size, but differing in developmental history, are not equally attractive to females," said Andrew Kahn, the study's lead author and a PhD candidate in the ANU Research School of Biology. Mosquitofish are an invasive species in Australia, originally introduced to control mosquitoes. Jules Livingston, an ANU honours student and co-author of the paper, previously showed that juvenile mosquitofish born into a food-scarce environment will undergo accelerated growth when food becomes available and delay sexual maturation to catch up with well-fed males of the same age. In this study, Mr Kahn and his colleagues investigated how this bump in the road to development affected adult mating.
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