In the article published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2022.0212 dr Magdalena Herdegen-Radwan (Department of Behavioural Ecology) presents empirical suport for the role of associative learning in originating sexual preferences. Sexual preferences of guppy females changed following food-conditoning on different colours, supporting the emergence of an association between the colour of the stimulus used for conditioning and that of the male ornament. Such learned preferences were also shown, for the first time, to translate into higher fitnesss (reproductive successs) of males with ornaments of the preferred colour. The study was supported by the National Science Centre, Poland.