Distinguishing the effects of familiarity, relatedness, and color pattern rarity on attractiveness and measuring their effects on sexual selection in guppies (Poecilia reticulata)

Mate choice is often based on multiple signal traits and can be influenced by context-dependent factors. Understanding the importance of these signals and factors can be difficult because they are often correlated and might interact. Here, we experimentally disentangle the effects of familiarity, kinship, pattern rarity, and ornament patterns on mate choice in guppies. We estimate whether these factors alter sexual selection on six phenotypic traits known to influence male attractiveness. Rarity of the male's phenotype is the only context-dependent factor that significantly influenced female mating decisions, with common patterns being least attractive. This preference for rare male patterns is a source of negative frequency-dependent selection that may contribute to maintaining the extreme polymorphism in male guppy coloration. Neither visual familiarity nor relatedness between mating partners had any significant effect on mate choice decisions. There was significant linear and nonlinear sexual selection on ornamental traits, but this was not influenced by the context-dependent measures. Our approach highlights the complexity of female mate choice and sexual selection, as well as the value of combining multifactorial experiments with multivariate selection analyses. Our study shows that both negative frequency-dependent selection and disruptive selection contribute to the maintenance of extreme polymorphism in guppies.