Hello, you fabulous human bean.Welcome to another Daily Fun Fact From Flora.So now we have discussed sexual selection in the role of pre-copulatory selection
and polyandry and sperm competition in the role of post-copulatory selection.Males now have to pick whether they want to invest more
in the pre-copulatory selection
ORpost-copulatory selection.This might sound a bit stupid. You may think that not investing in pre-copulatory selection is pointless. FLORA — what is the point
in having good sperm if you can’t even get it into a female ?! Well, actually sometimes you can, but it requires a bit of sneakiness.Let’s have a look at the bluegill sunfish, a freshwater species found in lakes in the USA.BLUEGILLThere are two types of males. (I know wtf).You have parental males
and sneaker males.Parental males
take
5 or 6 yearsto reach maturity, they’re large
and they defend territories. These territories are used to attract females
who lay their eggs in them and the males will look after the eggs.Sneaker males
are MUCH smaller and has a much
larger proportion of his bodysize allocated to his testes. Also, instead of wasting time with all this territory-guarding business he just waits til a female comes by one of the other males" territories.Then ,when she lays her eggs he releases LOADS of sperm
in the hopes of fertilising the eggs before the parental male does.This may sound ridiculous. A male that has been carefully guarding his territory isn’t going to let some other male come in at the last moment and, quite literally, fuck things up.But what if the sneaker males looked just like females.A close up of a fishDescription automatically generatedThe fish on the
leftis the parental male.The fish on the
rightis the female. The fish in the
middleIS the SNEAKER MALE.41 Fun Facts About FRIENDS | The Hob-bee HiveYES. Sneaker males look EXACTLY LIKE FEMALES
so they can freely wander onto the parental male’s territory, fertilise the REAL female’s eggs and then fuck off , leaving the other male to look after his kids.As we have mentioned before, this will only work if the dishonest signal is less frequent than the honest signal. Otherwise the parental males will catch on.The sneaker males have to be sufficiently rare
that the parental males will always assume
that a female-looking fish on his territory is in fact female.Hope you enjoyed this crazy fish fact.Love to you,Flora xxxx
