In collaboration with Monash honors student Nicholas Symons and a postdoctoral researcher, P. Andreas Svensson, Dr Wong and his team set out to discover what really motivates these little fish. A paper based on their research has just been published in the journal PLoS ONE.

"It turns out that male desert gobies put courtship before childcare," Dr Wong said.

"We found that when egg-tending males were in the presence of a female they spent more time outside their nest engaged in courtship rituals and less time inside the nest fanning their eggs, which they did in shorter bouts and less often."

"While we didn't measure what impact this had on females, it was significant that all of the males displayed a similar drive to leave the nest to attract potential mates."

Dr Wong said the evolutionary tradeoff demonstrated by male desert gobies was that it was worth engaging in behavior that could result in the loss of some eggs, for the chance to mate and produce more eggs with a new female.

"Parental effort and courtship are not compatible," Dr Wong said.