Latest Guppy Stories

[ Watch the Video: Guppy Jumping High Speed Video ] April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online As anyone who has ever owned a pet guppy knows, guppies will often jump out of their tanks. Parents have been stumped for answers when children ask why the fish would do such a thing. A new University of Maryland (UMD) study demonstrates how guppies are able to jump so high, and suggests an answer for why they do it. Biologist Daphne De Freitas Soares is an expert in the brain...

Fish are as good at evaluating numerical ratios as college students are, says a study published in the Feb. 15 issue of the open access journal PLoS ONE. Both the fish and the college students had to determine which of two collections of objects was larger. The students played a computerized game in which they chose the display showing more dots, without verbally counting them. The guppies were given the option to join either of two groups of fish, in adjoining tanks to each side; previous...

Scientists have observed a strategy for females to avoid unwanted male attention: choosing more attractive friends. Published today (7 December) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the study is the first to show females spending time with those more sexually attractive than themselves to reduce harassment from males. Carried out by the Universities of Exeter and Copenhagen, the study focuses on the Trinidadian guppy, a species of small freshwater fish. It shows that the...

UCLA biologists solve an evolution mystery Guppies in the wild have evolved over at least half-a-million years — long enough for the males' coloration to have changed dramatically. Yet a characteristic orange patch on male guppies has remained remarkably stable, though it could have become redder or more yellow. Why has it stayed the same hue of orange over such a long period of time? Because that's the color female guppies prefer. "Sometimes populations have to evolve just to stay...

Research sometimes means looking for one thing and finding another. Such was the case when biology professor Alice Gibb and her research team at Northern Arizona University witnessed a small amphibious fish, the mangrove rivulus, jump with apparent skill and purpose out of a small net and back into the water. This was no random flop, like you might see from a trout that’s just been landed. The rivulus seemed to know what it was doing. They hadn’t expected to see that behavior, even...

BELLEVUE, Wash., Aug. 22, 2011 /PRNewswire-iReach/ -- Guppy Media is proud to announce their acceptance on Inc. magazine's annual ranking of the top 5000 fastest-growing private companies in America. With a ranking of 858, Guppy Media is amongst America's top entrepreneurs who have been recognized by Inc. for their creativity, dedication, and hard work. "It is an honor to be on the list and a huge accomplishment for the company as a whole. This came at a perfect time as we just launched...

When prowling for a hook up, it's not always the good-looker who gets the girl. In fact, in a certain species of South American fish, brawn and stealth beat out colorful and refined almost every time.In a series of published studies of a South American species of fish (Poecilia parae), which are closely related to guppies, Syracuse University scientists have discovered how the interplay between male mating strategies and predator behavior has helped preserve the population's distinctive color...

Working on guppies, UC Riverside biologist finds that adults compensate for their poor early start through adaptive changesDoes the environment encountered early in life have permanent and predictable long-term effects in adulthood? Such effects have been reported in numerous organisms, including humans.But now a biology graduate student at the University of California, Riverside reports that how individuals fare as adults is not simply a passive consequence of the limits that early...

Study on guppies sheds light on long-term costs of early rapid growth and weight gainUniversity of California, Riverside biologists working on guppies "“ small freshwater fish that have been the subject of long-term studies "“ report that rapid growth responses to increased food availability after a period of growth restriction early in life have repercussions in adulthood.Based on their experiments, the biologists found that female guppies that grew rapidly as juveniles produced fewer...

In the natural stream communities of Trinidad, guppy populations live close together, but evolve differently. Upstream, fewer predators mean more guppies but less food for each; they grow slowly and larger, reproduce later and less, and die older. Downstream, where predators thrive, guppies eat more, grow rapidly, stay small, reproduce quickly and die younger.While it is clear to ecologists that an ecosystem shapes the evolution of animals living in it, population biology experts such as...