Clownfish Gender Change: Biology, Hierarchy, and Social Roles

The clownfish is a three-banded anemone fish that is capable of sex change.

According to the Australian.museum (2023), clownfish tend to start their lives as males, and eventually become females s they grow older and bigger. The fish tend to live in a strict hierarchy, where the different schools are led by a female, who is seconded by a submissive male where they two usually mate. All the other fish in the school are males, which usually is not a threat as clownfish are born hermaphrodites, before eventually becoming males. When the dominant female dies, the submissive male occupies her place changing her sex to female. The hierarchy is usually maintained within the school through body mass (Australian.museum, 2023). The female tends to be the largest in the school, followed by the submissive male, and the mass decreases as the hierarchy declines. Once the submissive male occupies the top position, they expand in size, while the other fish grows accordingly based on their new hierarchal positions.

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Clownfish indicate that sex is a biological concept, while gender is a social concept. Clownfish tend to change based on the roles assigned to them by the society they live within. Gender roles refer to society’s expectations of individuals’ attitudes and behavior based on whether they are males or females (Karkazis, 2019). How we behave and think as males and females is not encrypted in our biology but rather is due to how society expects us to behave and think based on our sex. Because clownfish only change gender after an external change in the society, they exist in. Thus, a male becomes a female in response to society’s expectations, since there is a need for a new leader in the school. Additionally, they also grow in size to meet societal requirements; thus, limited biological influence in behavior and attitudes.

References

Australian.museum (Retrieved, 2023) Sex Change in Clownfish. Australian Museum https://australian.museum/learn/teachers/classroom-activities/sex-change-in-clownfish/#:~:text=The%20three%20banded%20anemone%20fish,bigger%2C%20they%20eventually%20become%20female.

Karkazis, K. (2019). The misuses of “biological sex”. The Lancet, 394(10212), 1898-1899.