查看文章

The colorful diversity of coral-reef fishes has long been a source of fascination for both scientists and amateurs. We now know that this diversity of form and color is matched by an immense variety of social behaviors and sexual life histories, including several kinds of func tional hermaphroditism. Recent observations and ex perimental work suggest that the sexual patterns found in fishes may best be viewed as evolutionary responses to the species' mating systems, and much of the evidence I review here bears out this idea. Since most theory in behavioral ecology has been derived from studies of terrestrial vertebrates and insects, which have strictly separate sexes, the relationships between sexual ex pression and mating behavior in fishes offer new in sightsinto the role of sexuality in social evolution. Like other vertebrates, most fish species have sep arate sexes, a condition known as gonochorism. How ever, fishes are by no means restricted to this pattern: in many species individuals are capable of changing sex, a phenomenon sometimes called sequential herma phroditism, and in others fishes can be both sexes at the same time, displaying simultaneous hermaphrodi tism.