(Phys.org) —New research shows that the rarer a male guppy's colour pattern, the more attractive he is to females and the more offspring he will father. "We think that females might exhibit this ...

Figure 1: Colour pattern variation among males from a single population. Our results support the prediction of the ‘rare-male effect’ hypothesis that males with phenotypes that are rare in the ...

which shows how mate selection by female guppies for mates with rare color patterns keeps the gene pool deep. The paper, titled, Frequency-Dependent Survival in Natural Guppy Populations ...