Conservation practitioners face complex challenges due to resource limitations, biological and socioeconomic trade-offs, involvement of diverse interest groups, and data deficiencies. To help address these challenges, there are a growing number of frameworks for systematic decision making. Three prominent frameworks are structured decision making, systematic conservation prioritization, and systematic reviews. These frameworks have numerous conceptual linkages, and offer rigorous and transparent solutions to conservation problems. However, they differ in their assumptions and applicability. Here, we provide guidance on how to choose among these frameworks for solving conservation problems, and how to identify less rigorous techniques when time or data availability limit options. Each framework emphasizes the need for proper problem consideration and formulation, and includes steps for monitoring and evaluation. We recommend clear and documented problem formulation, adopting structured decision-making processes, and archiving results in a global database to support conservation professionals in making evidencebased decisions in the future.

Although females in numerous species generally prefer males with larger, brighter and more elaborate sexual traits, there is nonetheless considerable intra‐ and interpopulation variation in mating preferences amongst females that requires explanation. Such variation exists in the Trinidadian guppy, Poecilia reticulata, an important model organism for the study of sexual selection and mate choice. While female guppies tend to prefer more ornamented males as mates, particularly those with greater amounts of orange coloration, there remains variation both in male traits and female mating preferences within and between populations. Male body size is another trait that is sexually selected through female mate choice in some species, but has not been examined as extensively as body coloration in the guppy despite known intra‐ and interpopulation variation in this trait among adult males and its importance for survivorship in this species. In this study, we used a dichotomous‐choice test to quantify the mating preferences of female guppies, originating from a low‐predation population in Trinidad, for two male traits, body length and area of the body covered with orange and black pigmentation, independently of each other. We expected strong female mating preferences for both male body length and coloration in this population, given relaxation from predation and presumably relatively low cost of choice. Females indeed exhibited a strong preference for larger males as expected, but surprisingly a weaker (but nonetheless significant) preference for orange and black coloration. Interestingly, larger females demonstrated stronger preferences for larger males than did smaller females, which could potentially lead to size‐assortative mating in nature.

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Mate-choice copying in males is a form of social learning whereby an observer male modifies his inherent mating preference after observing a model male sexually interact with a female he did not initially prefer, and copies the mate preference of the model male. Little is known about such copying behaviour in males and how the phenotypes of males and(or) females interact to influence the likelihood of mate-choice copying and the strength of the copying response. Using the Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata), I investigated whether the relative sexual attractiveness of males influences the likelihood of mate-choice copying in males, and found that the highest rates of copying occurred when the model male was less sexually attractive than the observer male. Second, I tested whether the relative difference in the body size of paired females influenced the likelihood of male mate-choice copying, and did not find any evidence for such an effect.iii

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