Corvus wrote:Possible, but why should the females be larger, not the males?
Well, the female may mature at a faster rate than the male and have an increased growth rate because of that? The faster the females reach sexual maturity the better for the species...one mature male can fertilize a bunch of mature females.
the thought may seem right, but in experience in those fish which have larger females, the females mate with numerous males and the males are often more numerous than the females... in one male and a bunch of females constellations the males are generally larger, because they have to fight for their right to party and evolution quickly sorts the small and weaker ones out.
As noted above: in those puffer species which show sexual size differences the males appear to be larger. That does not mean it is the same with Tetraodon, but that you cannot be sure until you have eggs or dissections. I doubt ultra sounding will work given how sexual organs of fish can develop.
Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Give a fish a man, and he'll eat for weeks.
In my experience, dwarf puffer females are a bit larger, but one male will mate will multiple females, that's a bit odd for puffers, then?
No matter how magnificent your successes or devastating your failures, the worlds' approximately 5 billion impoverished people could not possibly care less.
I absolutely cannot confirm that the males are smaller on dwarf puffers.
The body shape becomes really different with age, especially when the females have eggs, but aside that in terms of size I think they are equal.
Give a man a fish, and he'll eat for a day. Give a fish a man, and he'll eat for weeks.
I tried to take pictures last night, but they just wouldn't pose together! They are the same fish, same markings, body shape.....just the one is growing like a weed and the other ones don't seem to be growing at all (although hard to tell because I'm comparing them to the ginormous Zephyr.)
Interesting ideas though about the female just growing quicker than the males. I hope the other two catch up because soon Zephyr will be able to eat the other ones (haha, well maybe not, but close). Part of the problem is that Zephyr will just not stop eating. He will eat an insane amount of food, then be swimming around looking for more. If I don't feed them all a lot, then the other two don't get any. Separating them to feed would be too stressful in my opinion.
