Heterospecific harassment of native endangered fishes by invasive guppies in Mexico

Abstract

Persistent courtship by male Trinidadian guppies ( Poecilia reticulata ) is costly for conspecific females. Since male guppies are known to attempt matings with other poeciliid females, we asked whether persistent courtship is also directed towards morphologically similar but phylogenetically distant females encountered following invasion. Skiffia bilineata is one of several endangered viviparous goodeids from Central México, whose remaining habitats are increasingly shared with invasive guppies. Experiments in which guppy sex ratios were manipulated to vary the proportion of heterospecific to conspecific females showed that male guppies courted and attempted forced copulations with S. bilineata females even when females of their own species were in excess. This behaviour places an additional, and previously unrecognized, burden on a group of endemic Mexican fishes already in risk of extinction.