Thursday, December 8, 2011

They call it Guppy Love

In the article “They call it guppy love” UCLA scientists discovered an evolution mystery. The male guppy has consistently changed color for over a half a million years but one thing always stayed constant an orange patch. It slightly changed being redder or more yellow at times but it was always consistent. These scientists discovered that it is because that’s what the female guppies
like. The males have evolved over and over again because that is what the ladies like. The orange patches are made up of two things, carotenoids, which are digested, and drosopterins which are produced. They discovered that the males with the middle color orange. Not to yellow and not to red. The females chose the males with intermediate amounts of drosopterins by a significant margin. Males with the right color orange typically produce more offspring because the
females are more attracted to them.

1 comment:

  1. It's kind of funny to see the answer to such an old question be the simplest one.

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