(By the way, if your females are from a shop, the odds are that they are not only pregnant, but have probably stored enough sperm for six batches.  They should be "good to go until early 2008! But if your male(s) mate with them within 24 hours of when they drop, the odds, especially after the second drop and mating, is that the more recent mating will provide more vigorous sperm and that that will fertilize most or all of the eggs in that second or third batch.)

Guppies have two ways of mating. Larger more colorful males (among wild type guppies this would include males with orange and contrasting black on their sides) will present an S-shaped dance for up to a couple of seconds at a time. This is called a sigmoid display. If you Google the Net for [guppy sigmoid display] you will get a lot of hits. Some of the articles or at least their abstracts are very technical. Studies of how various insecticides and other chemicals in the water mess up the male guppy's ability to display seem to be popular lately.

There is a second type of guppy mating called sneak-spawning or gonopodial thrusting. In this case the male(s) try to sneak up on the female from out of their vision and thrust their gonopodium at the female's vent by her gravid spot. In most situations those are unsuccessful.

The ability to present sigmoid displays and to repeat them frequently seem to cause female guppies to "glide" nearer to the male and allow him to mate with her. Studies of wild guppies suggest that females (who are also releasing a pheromone which alerts males to her impregnable condition) will select three males with whom she will mate in the critical 24-hour period after giving birth to fry.

There is a fair amount of evidence that male guppies with vibrant colors and the ability to display more frequently than other males are healthier and far less likely to carry parasites. The people studying those guppies felt that somehow the females "knew" that their fry would have a better chance of surviving because their sires were bigger, stronger and healthier than the other males.

http://asab.nottingham.ac.uk/pubs/practicals.php

This is somewhat reflected by domestic guppies. Really fancy guppies don't keep some of the behaviors of wild guppies though.

I just read about this again while re-reading     Fish Behavior in the Aquarium and in the Wild by Stephan Reebs. He cites studies done a long time ago which recorded these behaviors. He notes though that the usual acceptance of colorful males and the sigmoid dance may not work in waters with large and dangerous (to the guppy) predators like Acara and pike cichlids. The female guppies (already targets because they are bigger and offer more nutrition for the effort) do not want the predator's attention brought their way by conspicuous males. Indeed they may even allow themselves to be mated with by the relatively dull sneakers so they can be quickly fertilized and get back to hiding from the predators! (Reebs: pages 154-156 and 192-194)

This is discussed in even more detail in Dr. Anne Houde's Sex, Color and Mate Choice in Guppies. These are considered in a number of other places too.

http://search.half.ebay.com/ is a good place to look for those books if you are really into this. If you go to your public library and look up a reference librarian, you can probably get them through inter-library loan. It will cost you a little gas and time to go to the library and you will have to wait a week or two, but other than that it is your tax dollars already at work. ;)

See also: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/sex/guppy/habitat.html

So you have made some pretty sophisticated observations. You are ahead of some pretty experienced aquarists. :)

Please look at the Immediate Help links on the upper right on this page. Before your females drop, you must decide if you want any fry to survive. There are a lot of ways of saving them. Please read over the discussions on
# Breeding
# Pregnancy and Birth
# Sexing Fry
# Fry Diet and Safety

If you have the time, read over the other sections of IH too. The diseases can come last. Preventing them should come soon.

You mention a second diary. I don't see another authored by Wolfluv1. It is very possible that your wrote one out, previewed it and then neglected to "Post" it. That is something we've all done if we have spent any time on Guppylog. :)

Please try again. If you still have your browser open from when you posted that diary, you may be able to back-arrow until you find it again. If you can do that, post it.

That problem of vanishing comments (along with spell-checking and proof-reading) is why I will often compose a diary or comment in Plain Text or Word on my computer and then paste it in on Guppylog. It is not a bad idea to set up a Guppylog file or Guppy file and keep a copy of your posts anyway.

Change Plain Text to Auto Format. Then if you leave an important URL, it will become a live link.

One last little cosmetic thing, not a biggie, but typing in all capital letters is seen on the Net as screaming. I don't think that was the impression you were trying to convey. :)