Billy Ocean may not have been thinking of fish when he wrote
"The Color of Love", but Sophie Hutter, Attila Hettyey, Dustin
Penn, and Sarah Zala from the Konrad Lorenz Institute of
Ethology of the University of Veterinary Medicine, Vienna were
able to show that zebrafish males and females both wear their
brightest colors while wooing a mate. Elaborate secondary sexual
displays are often overlooked because many species attract mates
through sensory modalities imperceptible to humans, including
ultraviolet light, ultrasound, electrical signals, or
pheromones. Also, sexual coloration may only be expressed
briefly during courtship (ephemeral courtship dichromatisms) to
avoid attracting predators. Zebrafish (Danio rerio) are a widely
studied model organism, though there have been few studies on
their mating behaviour. Like many schooling fish, zebrafish do
not appear sexually dichromatic to humans; there are no obvious
differences in the colour of males and females. Previous studies
suggest that colour and stripe