When I mentioned Id been teaching sexual selection Phyllis told me about this great example with fish. It involves the plainfin midshipman fish (Are there fancyfin midshipmen?
What a name apparently the midshipman part refers to spots along the midline that look like midshipmans buttons. Im going to take a wild guess that this common name was coined back in the age of sail.) Anyway these fish apparently have two types of males and the males differ not only in behavior but also in morphology. The imaginative scientific terms for these males are type 1 and type 2 males but my wonderful wife calls them burly males and girly males. The burly males are eight times bigger than females they gather up/fight for females and form females into a harem chasing off any other males who swim into their seraglio (a fancy word for a large harem Im just trying to improve my vocabulary). The girly males are roughly the same size as females and look like females. Girly males are not aggressive and they like to sneak into the harem/seraglio (did you know the word seraglio can also mean a house of women kept for debauchery? I didnt until I just looked it up). Once amidst the girls of the harem the girly males enjoy the favors of the females which is a Victorian way of saying they have sex albeit fish sex which is just layin and sprayin (females lay eggs males squirt sperm on them). Great story right? And the question is: how the heck do two types of males evolve and persist in one species? In other words given your understanding of sexual selection and evolution speculate on how the burly male girly male dichotomy might evolve and become a stable mating system. [This is another Higley aside nothing to do with the question. I wanted to see if plainfin was plainfin or plain fin and in reading on the web I discovered that these fish sing (?!) singing is associated with female mating behavior (?!!) and the vocalizations of plainfin midshipmen are used to model aspects of human vocalizations (?!!!). Also they the plainfins not the vocalizations are quite ugly in my opinion.] Show less
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