Female mate-choice copying in guppies, Poecilia reticulata: a re-evaluation

It has been argued that intraspecific mate-choice copying can be adaptive under certain conditions. Dugatkin's (1992, Am. Nat.139, 1384-1389) work with guppies, Poecilia reticulataremains the most influential experimental demonstration of this phenomenon. We replicated Dugatkin's work using several choice criteria to ensure that our results were not dependent upon any single method of judging mate choice. We also tested our findings against two null hypotheses of differing stringency. Irrespective of the choice criteria or null hypothesis used, we did not observe any relationship between female mate choice and copying. We conclude that further experimental evidence of female mate-choice copying is required before the existence of this behaviour can be affirmed.1997The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour