The dynamics of mating interactions can vary in response to a wide variety of environmental factors. Here, we investigate the potential for individuals to vary consistently in the environmental conditions under which they actively engage in courtship. Specifically, we quantify variation in how courtship activity changes with environmental temperature across levels of biological organization in Enchenopa binotata treehoppers.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiologists have long wondered how sexual ornamentation influences a species' risk of extinction. Because the evolution of condition-dependent ornamentation can reduce intersexual conflict and accelerate the fixation of advantageous alleles, some theory predicts that ornamented taxa can be buffered against extinction in novel and/or stressful environments. Nevertheless, evidence from the wild remains limited.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMating behaviors are sensitive to novel or stressful thermal conditions, particularly for ectothermic organisms. An organism's sensitivity to temperature, which may manifest in altered mating outcomes, can be shaped in part by temperatures experienced during development. Here, we tested how developmental temperature shapes the expression of adult mating-related behaviors across different ambient conditions, with a focus on courtship behavior, mating rates, and mating signals and preferences.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe ability of animals to adapt to warming will depend on the evolutionary potential of thermally sensitive traits. The number of studies measuring the quantitative genetics of a wide variety of thermally sensitive traits has steadily increased; however, no study has yet investigated the quantitative genetics of thermal sensitivity for courtship traits. Since courtship often precedes mating, the ability of these traits to respond to warming may impact reproduction and therefore population persistence.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThermal ecology and mate competition are both pervasive features of ecological adaptation. A surge of recent work has uncovered the diversity of ways in which temperature affects mating interactions and sexual selection. However, the potential for thermal biology and reproductive ecology to evolve together as organisms adapt to their thermal environment has been underappreciated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe evolution of complex signals has often been explored by testing multiple functional hypotheses regarding how independent signal components provide selective benefits to offset the costs of their production. In the present study, we take a different approach by exploring the function of complexity . We test the hypothesis that increased vibratory signal complexity-based on both proportional and temporal patterning-provides selective benefits to courting male wolf spiders.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAdaptation to different climates fuels the origins and maintenance of biodiversity. Detailing how organisms optimize fitness for their local climates is therefore an essential goal in biology. Although we increasingly understand how survival-related traits evolve as organisms adapt to climatic conditions, it is unclear whether organisms also optimize traits that coordinate mating between the sexes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFUrbanization and the by-product pollutants of anthropogenic activity pose unique threats to arthropods by altering their sensory environments. Sounds generated by human activities, like construction and road traffic, can oversaturate or interfere with biotic acoustic cues that regulate important ecological processes, such as trophic interactions and the coordination of mating. Here, we review recent work exploring how anthropogenic noise impacts inter-intra-specific interactions in insects and arachnids.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTemperature shapes the processes and outcomes of behaviors that occur throughout the progression of insect and arachnid mating interactions and reproduction. Here, we highlight how temperature impacts precopulatory activity levels, competition among rivals, communication with potential mates, and the relative costs and benefits of mating. We review how both the prevailing temperature conditions during reproductive activity and the temperatures experienced early in life influence mating-related behavior.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFVariation in temperature can affect the expression of a variety of important fitness-related behaviours, including those involved with mate attraction and selection, with consequences for the coordination of mating across variable environments. We examined how temperature influences the expression of male mating signals and female mate preferences-as well as the relationship between how male signals and female mate preferences change across temperatures (signal-preference temperature coupling)-in Enchenopa binotata treehoppers. These small plant-feeding insects communicate using plantborne vibrations, and our field surveys indicate they experience significant natural variation in temperature during the mating season.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBetter characterization of the sources of phenotypic variation in human behavioural traits-stemming from genetic and environmental influences-will allow for more informed decisions about how to approach a range of challenges arising from variation, ranging from societal issues to the treatment of diseases. In particular, understanding how the environment moderates genetic influence on phenotypes (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThere is growing evidence that speciation can occur between populations that are not geographically isolated. The emergence of assortative mating is believed to be critical to this process, but how assortative mating arises in diverging populations is poorly understood. The wolf spider genus Schizocosa has become a model system for studying mechanisms of assortative mating.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe study of mating choices often focuses on correlates of traits to the overall outcome of a mating interaction. However, mating interactions can proceed through a series of stages, with opportunities for assessment at each stage. We compared whether male or female size predicted mating interaction outcome across several stages of mating in five species of North American leiobunine harvestmen (commonly known as daddy longlegs).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFA key question in speciation research is how ecological and sexual divergence arise and interact. We tested the hypothesis that mate choice causes local adaptation and ecological divergence using the rationale that the performance~signal trait relationship should parallel the attractiveness~signal trait relationship. We used female fecundity as a measure of ecological performance.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFGenetic, life history, and environmental factors dictate patterns of variation in sexual traits within and across populations, and thus the action and outcome of sexual selection. This study explores patterns of inheritance, diet, age, and mate-choice copying on the expression of male sexual signals and associated female mate choice in a phenotypically diverse group of wolf spiders. Focal spiders exhibit one of two male phenotypes: 'ornamented' males possess large black brushes on their forelegs, and 'non-ornamented' males possess no brushes.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFisherian selection is a within-population process that promotes signal-preference coevolution and speciation due to signal-preference genetic correlations. The importance of the contribution of Fisherian selection to speciation depends in part on the answer to two outstanding questions: What explains differences in the strength of signal-preference genetic correlations? And, how does the magnitude of within-species signal-preference covariation compare to species differences in signals and preferences? To address these questions, we tested for signal-preference genetic correlations in two members of the Enchenopa binotata complex, a clade of plant-feeding insects wherein speciation involves the colonization of novel host plants and signal-preference divergence. We used a full-sibling, split-family rearing experiment to estimate genetic correlations and to analyze the underlying patterns of variation in signals and preferences.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBiol Rev Camb Philos Soc
May 2016
Mating traits and mate preferences often show patterns of tight correspondence across populations and species. These patterns of apparent coevolution may result from a genetic association between traits and preferences (i.e.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFinding and attracting mates can impose costs on males in terms of increased encounters with, and attraction of, predators. To decrease the likelihood of predation, males may modify mate-acquisition efforts in two main ways: they may reduce mate-searching efforts or they may reduce mate-attraction efforts. The specific behavior that males change in the presence of predator cues should depend upon the nature of risk imposed by the type of predator present in the environment.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAn individual's prior experience of sexual signals can result in variation in mate preferences, with important consequences for the course of sexual selection. We test two hypotheses about the evolution of experience-mediated plasticity in mate preferences: mating assurance and mismating avoidance. We exposed female Enchenopa binotata treehoppers (Hemiptera: Membracidae) to treatments that varied their experience of signal frequency, the most divergent sexual signal trait in the E.
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