DOES A MALES ATTRACTIVENESS TO A FEMALE DEPEND ON HER PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE

Female guppies from a South African feral population display a strong mating preference for males bearing large areas of orange pigmentation . We provide substantiation for this in pairwise choice trials. We sho w that naive virgin females are capable of acting upon their mating pr eferences despite no prior experience of mature males on which to base this choice. This is evidence for a fixed internal standard' of prefe rence. We also show that this standard of attractiveness is modified b y a female's previous experience.