Fish Research
In 1990 Diane Hack, a student in the Vertebrate Zoology course, did a class
project about the effects of nutrition on egg production in fathead minnows,
a native Kansas fish. She noted that female minnows laid most of their
eggs for one of several males in each aquarium. The male then provided
all subsequent parental care. This intrigued me because mate selection
is a hot' topic in the discipline of animal behavior. Factors affecting
a female's choice of mate have received little attention, so Diane and
I set about studying this phenomenon in the fathead minnows. Ultimately
4 students participated in directed research on this project (BI395/396
Research in Biology): Diane Hack, Rachel Polednak, John Rippetoe, and Gary
Welcher. Diane and Rachel were co-authors on a paper presented at the 1993
Animal Behavior Society Meeting. Our findings indicate that females prefer
to spawn for dominant males. Gary and I began investigating whether dominant
males might be preferred because they had higher egg survival rates (perhaps
their status makes them better able to protect eggs).
© 2001 by Lee Boyd