Green swordtails are sexually dimorphic: males have a long, swordlike projection
ID: 7574 • Letter: G
Question
Green swordtails are sexually dimorphic: males have a long, swordlike projectionfrom their tails, and females have rounded tails. In choice experiments, female swordtail greatly prefer males with elongated tails to males with tails of normal length.An experimenter decides to perform an experiment on a closely related species, a molly,in which males and females are not sexually dimorphic for tail size and shape. He glues artificial tails to half of his male subjects, and leaves the others alone.
a.Describe what he should do next
b.Imagine that this experiment was conduced, and females has a strong
preference for augmented males. Why might this be the case?
Explanation / Answer
He should observe the amount of mating that occurs between the different types. Then determine a p value from the experiment to determine if the data is in fact significant or not. The cause may be due to the fact that it may be easier for the females to see the males with the long tails. And/or it could be easier for them to recognize them as the same species or it is easier for them to mate with each other.
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