Sex Is The Weapon For Guppies In Mexico
Guppies, originally from Trinidad, invaded Mexican waters in the 1950s, a major reason being aquarium owners dumping these fish species into rivers.
And now, a new research in the New Scientist, suggests that the male guppies, are sexually harassing females of another fish species to prevent them from reproducing.
Researchers think that the guppies end up physically harming the native females so they are unable to reproduce with males of their own species – a way of suppressing their population.
One species that suffered from the sexual invasion of the guppies was Skiffia bilineata, a fish native to Mexican waters which is threatened with extinction.
Because of the fact that female skiffia look like female guppies, researchers from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Mexico wanted to find out if this was contributing to the species’ decline.
They put male and female guppies in aquariums with female skiffia and found that no matter how many female guppies were around, male guppies would try to copulate with females of both species.
Their advances were unsuccessful, but the research team believes that the attempts at sex might be harming the female skiffia. If this is true, the skiffia may not be able to go on to reproduce with males of their own species.
While Skiffia sex is consensual, guppy sex is more violent, with the males inserting a hookes genital organ known as gonopodium into the females.
Past research has shown that the gonopodium maims guppy females and because the males may attempt to insert this hooked organ into female skiffia, they harm them in the process. [Via]
