well... in all types of breeding, even in fish (like koi)... male dominant breeding is the fastest way to get clones of the actual male... it's the same as chickens... also, most patterns in koi fish are passed down by the male... if you try to get clean patterns off of a female, they come out incomplete...
So I looked into your examples of "male dominant" breeding. First the koi.
No sooner did I find information suggesting that male contributes color and female contributes conformation, than I found other articles suggesting that these notions are myths and that both fish contribute to both, and by the same token, that you can certainly get all sorts of varieties out of fish that look nothing like the parents. That is hardly surprising to read.
Regarding Chickens, well it sounds like a few genetic traits are sex-linked. That seems to be a well documented FACT. That however, does not suggest that only the male is important, far from it.
Now here's a couple more interesting counterpoints:
#1. African Cichlids. Specifically, lets talk about fish where the females are drab / colorless. In this case, other than being female and of good health and conformation, there is little if anything that can be discerned about the color characteristics that a female might impart on her offspring. So, if you were breeding to "improve" the finnage/coloration of the male form, you'd be very particular about what male you select for each breeding. So yes, a male-oriented breeding plan, but one made that way out of necessity and the limitations of what a breeder can discern from the naked eye. The female is an unknown quantity until you see the offspring that are produced from the mating (or if you juice her with hormones to reveal male traits, but that's another topic).
#2. All of our examples above we are dealing with gonochoristic animals - animals that are born male or female and stay that way. Clownfish are NOT gonochorists, they are protandrous hermaphrodites. So the fish that is one day a male will later on in life play the female role. While I acknowledge that there very well could still be the possibility of sex-linked traits in clownfish, the premise that a clownfish plays at being both male and female would suggest that it's highly unlikely, at least to me. Afterall, the same base tissues that create the male testes also create the female ovaries. Same genetic base. Obviously the gametes are still "male gametes" or "female gametes", so I suppose there's a chance. But still, they come from the same genetic base.
i never heard of the picasso line coming from a wild male picasso perc over a wild female perc... i just said it because it's kind of what breeders do...
The ORA pair that started it all was a WC male Picasso with a female normal. Not saying that you in particular needed to be aware of that, just saying that the rumor that "male drives striping" most likely is a poor derivation and miscommunication based on the initial facts.
It is again, highly interesting to note that Doni Marie recently reported on the MBI forum that she has seen no difference in stripe inheritance when the Picasso is a male, or a female, in the pair. While the genetics of being Lightning could be totally different, we can theorize that they probably have similar causes. And to that end, if that was the case, both my own thoughts on "it's the same fish, male or female", and Doni's experiences, would highly suggest that in fact stripe genetics are not a sex-linked trait in clownfish.
environmental...? hmm... it might be possible... but something that irratic and different...? i highly doubt it...
It was actually Martin Moe who proposed this (back in CORAL)
there could possibly be a couple of them in the ocean... or maybe one male that had a couple of offspring and they made it around the reefs... like they say, there are plenty of fish in the sea... i'm sure the collectors can't see every specimen out there...
We know at least 2 existed and were collected. That right there is proof enough that there's more than one
That is the first clue that there may be a genetic basis for this trait.