Early social experience shapes female mate choice in guppies

Macario, Alessandro; Croft, Darren P.; Endler, John A.; Darden, Safi K.

doi:10.1093/beheco/arx043

Cited by 23 publications

(21 citation statements)

References 64 publications

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“…Paradoxically, the breakdown of reproductive isolation may be especially informative in answering questions about how it was established by exposing candidate traits that constitute the normally effective barrier to interbreeding (15)(16)(17). Further insights can then be gained by conducting experiments on the genetic and experiential basis of mate choice and preferences of closely related species (16,(18)(19)(20)(21)(22).…”

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confidence: 99%

Role of sexual imprinting in assortative mating and premating isolation in Darwin’s finches

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2018

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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Global biodiversity is being degraded at an unprecedented rate, so it is important to preserve the potential for future speciation. Providing for the future requires understanding speciation as a contemporary ecological process. Phylogenetically young adaptive radiations are a good choice for detailed study because diversification is ongoing. A key question is how incipient species become reproductively isolated from each other. Barriers to gene exchange have been investigated experimentally in the laboratory and in the field, but little information exists from the quantitative study of mating patterns in nature. Although the degree to which genetic variation underlying mate-preference learning is unknown, we provide evidence that two species of Darwin’s finches imprint on morphological cues of their parents and mate assortatively. Statistical evidence of presumed imprinting is stronger for sons than for daughters and is stronger for imprinting on fathers than on mothers. In combination, morphology and species-specific song learned from the father constitute a barrier to interbreeding. The barrier becomes stronger the more the species diverge morphologically and ecologically. It occasionally breaks down, and the species hybridize. Hybridization is most likely to happen when species are similar to each other in adaptive morphological traits, e.g., body size and beak size and shape. Hybridization can lead to the formation of a new species reproductively isolated from the parental species as a result of sexual imprinting. Conservation of sufficiently diverse natural habitat is needed to sustain a large sample of extant biota and preserve the potential for future speciation.

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confidence: 99%

Role of sexual imprinting in assortative mating and premating isolation in Darwin’s finches

Grant

2018

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U.S.A.

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“…As mentioned earlier, a number of studies in both natural and laboratory contexts have shown that female guppies often prefer rare (novel) phenotypes within their own population (Hughes et al 1999;Zajitschek and Brooks 2008;Macario et al 2017;Hampton et al 2009;Hughes et al 2013). Suggested reasons include inbreeding avoidance (Johnson et al 2012), reduced probability of remating with the same male (Hampton et al 2009), and a survival advantage for rare individuals (Olendorf et al 2006).…”

Section: Why No Progress Toward Reproductive Barriers?mentioning

confidence: 98%

“…Specifically, given that male color and female preference can rapidly evolve as a set of correlated traits (Houde and Endler 1990), we ask if assortative mate preferences evolve on the same timescale as this would facilitate local adaptation. Alternatively, if no evidence for assortative mating is observed it may reflect that it evolves more slowly or never evolves because of preference for novelty (see papers by Hughes et al 1999;Zajitschek and Brooks 2008;Hampton et al 2009;Hughes et al 2013;Macario et al 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Female preference for novel males constrains the contemporary evolution of assortative mating in guppies

et al. 2019

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Progress toward local adaptation is expected to be enhanced when divergent selection is multidimensional, because many simultaneous sources of selection can increase the total strength of selection and enhance the number of independent traits under selection. Yet, whether local adaptation ensues from multidimensional selection also depends on its potential to cause the build-up of reproductive barriers such as sexual signals and preference for these signals. We used replicate experimental introductions of guppies (Poecilia reticulata) in nature to test whether an abrupt and dramatic shift in multiple important ecological dimensions (at a minimum: parasitism, predation, and diet/resources) promoted the contemporary evolution of assortative mating. After 8-12 postintroduction guppy generations in the wild, we bred descendants of each population in a common-garden laboratory environment for 2 generations, after which we recorded the preferences of females from each population for males from all populations. We found contemporary evolution of male traits (size, body condition, color) that should influence mate choice, but no evidence for the occurrence of positive assortative preferences. That is, females in a given evolving population did not prefer males from that population over males from other populations. Instead, females tended to prefer novel males (i.e., disassortative mating), which likely acts as a mechanism preventing the evolution of reproductive isolation. Preferences for novelty may explain why many cases of local adaptation do not lead to the evolution of reproductive barriers and ecological speciation.

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“…perceived predation risk (Johnson and Basolo, 2003;Kim et al, 2009), signalling environment (Endler, 1991;Gordon and Uetz, 2011)), intrinsic factors (e.g. female age and condition (Coleman et al, 2004;Cotton et al, 2006), cost of sampling males (Milinski and Bakker, 1992)), social experience (Jirotkul, 1999;Mery et al, 2009;Rutledge et al, 2010;Witte and Nöbel, 2011) and distinct developmental trajectories (Bailey and Zuk, 2008;Macario et al, 2017). The conditions experienced early in life strongly influence the development of an individual's morphology, behaviour and cognition (Buchanan et al, 2013;Stamps, 2016;West-Eberhard, 2003), however, some gaps remain in the understanding of the effects of the social context experienced during ontogeny on mate choice.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previous studies on oblique imprinting have investigated how the manipulation of secondary sexual traits known to be good predictors of mating success affected the outcome of mate choice. For example, Macario et al (2017) found that, in the Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata), both the values of male coloration experienced as juveniles and the duration of exposure influenced females' preferences and choosiness. Walling et al (2008) varied the size of the sword -an important criterion of mate choice in the genus Xiphophorus -to which growing females were exposed and demonstrated that the preference for long swords could be reversed if female experience was restricted to short-sworded males.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Male phenotypic diversity experienced during ontogeny mediates female mate choice in guppies

2019

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Early social experience shapes female mate choice in guppies

Cited by 23 publications

References 64 publications

Role of sexual imprinting in assortative mating and premating isolation in Darwin’s finches

Role of sexual imprinting in assortative mating and premating isolation in Darwin’s finches

Female preference for novel males constrains the contemporary evolution of assortative mating in guppies

Male phenotypic diversity experienced during ontogeny mediates female mate choice in guppies

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