MALES that flash flirty signals at females aren’t necessarily boasting about
their sexual prowess. In some fish, males may be conveying information about the
safety of their surroundings, coaxing the females into feeling relaxed enough to
mate.
Males are known to use courting to signal the quality of their genes, but
when marine biologists Bob Warner from the University of California in Santa
Barbara and Lawrence Dill of Simon Fraser University in Burnaby, Canada, studied
a Caribbean reef fish called the bluehead wrasse (Thalassoma
bifasciatum), this explanation didn’t make sense. “Females tend to be quite
faithful,” says Warner. “But the…
