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Blog 8: Pipefish Sexual Selection

Pipefish females exhibit elaborate and colorful courting displays in order to compete for males. This is unusual for the animal kingdom as in most other species with strong sexual selection like this, it is the males who court the choosy females. The question is, why are pipefish different? 

 In the theory of sexual selection, sexually dimorphic species have differing constraints on their reproductive success. In species with different levels of parental care (one essentially does all the raising of offspring while the other only contributes genetic material then dips), one is constrained by the time and energy it has and the other is constrained by how many mates it can have. The parent who will be raising the offspring and investing the most time and energy should therefore be choosy of potential mates so as to ensure the success of their precious offspring. On the other hand, the parent who just needs to get with as many mates as possible will need to compete with others for mates and so evolve traits to make themselves as desirable as possible. This difference results in the striking sexual dimorphism and elaborate courting displays we often see in the animal kingdom. In most species, the choosy parent is the female and the competitive parent is the male. Pipefish are the opposite.

Pipefish are members of the seahorse family, which, as I know from watching the tv show The Most Extreme on Animal Planet in 2005, leaves the birthing and care of offspring to its male counterparts. Knowing this about their biology, it then makes sense that it's the females this time who show off for the males.

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