Word: dimidiatus
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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Word may not have filtered down to local chapters of Women's Lib, but a renegade group has been found among the ranks of Australian females. Both sexes of Labroides dimidiatus, an unprepossessing little fish of the wrasse family that lives in the waters of the Great Barrier Reef, are rampant male chauvinists. Not only do the males rule the reef, but the females like the idea so much that they turn into males themselves at the first opportunity...
Over a period of 25 months, Robertson studied 19 different harems of L. dimidiatus and recorded 48 instances of sex transformation. "Probably all females are capable of changing sex," Robertson writes in Science, "and most (possibly all) have testicular elements within perfectly functional ovaries." What prevents wholesale sex transformation by the females in a harem is a chain of authority extending downward from the lone male. A former female (like most other males of this species), he bullies the strongest female, who in turn is overbearing toward the female under her, and so on down the social scale. As long...
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