Guppies control offspring size at birth in response to differences in population sex ratio

Females that invest adaptively in their offspring are predicted to channel more resources to the sex that will be at an advantage in the prevailing environmental conditions. Here, we report, for the first time, that female Trinidadian guppy, Poecilia reticulata, respond in reproductively distinct ways when faced with differences in operational sex ratio. We show that females assigned to a female-biased sex ratio produce larger male offspring than females in an environment in which males predominate. Given the link between size at birth and fitness, and the marked reproductive skew in this species, larger male offspring are expected to have reproductive advantages in guppy populations with an excess of females. (C) 2010 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2010, 100, 414-419.