Rivulus Reproductive Strategy

Rivulus, a genus of freshwater fish, has a very odd reproductive strategy. This fish is hermaphroditic, which in itself it not too uncommon among fishes. Rivulus is able to self fertilize, though not in the way that a majority of self fertilizing fish do. Most fish which reproduce by this method are females which produce fertilized eggs, more or less producing clones of itself. The drawback to the strategy is it limits genetic diversity. The rivulus however, will produce both sperm and eggs. When gametes are formed during meisos, Rivulus will therefore maintain the "crossing-over" phase which most other hermaphorditic fish lack. This gives the fish the ability to maintain some level of genetic diversity among its populations. Of course this diversity is still limited by the fact that there isn't multiple populations mixing.