and now deep....thoughts.......

[Smokey]

heh --- the simplest things seem to work.

Forget about all the packages products. use what works, best..

[Francisco_Borrero]

Very interesting ideas Jason and Al. On the behavioral differences which could be associated with differential capture probabilities of males and females, as a devil's advocate one could argue that such artifact would be stronger in species that exhibit less cooperative (female/male) brood care than discus. Discus pairs appear (of course, mostly from observation of doemestics) a species with a relative high degree of cooperation. However, the argument offered is attractive and may be partially true.

Regarding drab females and attractive males, there are here and there a few species that do exactly the opposite, although they are indeed the exeption to the overall pattern. Most well known are Jacana rails (birds), where the male is drab and does clutch duties and the female is good looking and doesn't bother after laying eggs. And of course, humans may be the ultimate example, where females are lovely and males suc.. I guess that just may be my bias.

Thanks and cheers, Francisco.

[Willie]

Wow, an original thought. Very impressive, Jason. I like to add a few more details because it dovetails with some of my observations.

A while ago, I read in Dick Au's Back to Nature book that female Goldens were more red than males. I thought about that for a while and went to check my own pairs. At that time, I had three sets of Golden Sunrise that had paired up. Sure enough, in each case, the female was redder than the male. Now I have a pair of Marlboro Golds and the female is also redder than the male. Part of this is that females are smaller than males. If they have any color, it would be a little more intense on the females. In all these cases, the fish had a light yellow background so the red color was more noticeable.

Now you're proposing that the red occurs because females have higher estrogen levels. That makes total sense. I'm also looking at my Alenquers and it seems that females are also redder than males. Does anyone have a real red male Alenquer?

Willie

[April]

I was told that the alencer females usually have the darker band in her dorsal fin also.