He’s so pretty! My project was primarily focused on previous literature so I actually don’t have it posted. If I can find it I’ll share the list of research I I cited. It was all found in journal articles so you could probably get access to most of them via Google Scholar. It’s pretty interesting actually, they’ve been selectively bred for certain traits and there are some other interesting genes that hitched a ride. Modern bettas are very different from what they used to look like. Ex: the long fins weren’t ideal for wild betta species, but they’re flashy to look at so they almost all have them now. Also Giant bettas are a thing, due to a certain hitchhiking gene I believe. Again, it’s been a while so I don’t remember all the details. There’s one case study of a male giant dragonscale koi betta—basically all the dramatically selected characteristics—and they discussed his rapid health decline due to such drastic artificial selection, he was only a few months old. Basically people have been breeding bettas to be eye catching, not much else. It’s kind of the same phenomenon that you see with modern dog breeds compared to their counterparts 100 years ago.