The seemingly transparent wings of many insects have recently been found to display unexpected structural coloration. These structural colours (wing interference patterns: WIPs) may be involved in species recognition and mate choice, yet little is known about the evolutionary processes that shape them. Furthermore, to date investigations of WIPs have not fully considered how they are actually perceived by the viewers' colour vision. Here, we use multispectral digital imaging and a model of Drosophila vision to compare WIPs of male and female Drosophila simulans from replicate populations forced to evolve with or without sexual selection for 68 generations. We show that WIPs modelled in Drosophila vision evolve in response to sexual selection and provide evidence that WIPs correlate with male sexual attractiveness. These findings add a new element to the otherwise well-described Drosophila courtship display and confirm that wing colours evolve through sexual selection.
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018.2850 | DOI Listing |
Curr Biol
January 2025
Department of Biology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA; Biological Sciences Graduate Program, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA. Electronic address:
Sperm competition is found across multicellular organisms using both external and internal fertilization. Sperm competition and post-copulatory cryptic female choice can promote incompatibility between species due to the antagonistic coevolution of the sexes within a species. This between-species incompatibility is accelerated and markedly asymmetrical when sexual mode differs, producing the "weak inbreeder, strong outcrosser" (WISO) pattern.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEvolution
January 2025
Centre for Ecological Sciences, Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru, 560012, India.
Under current climate change patterns, rapidly changing environments can impose strong selection on traits. Costly traits that require heavy investment and strongly affect fitness may be particularly vulnerable to such changes. Despite organisms experiencing dynamic environments, our knowledge of costly trait response is limited as longitudinal studies across generations are rare.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCurr Opin Insect Sci
January 2025
Department of Genetics and Developmental Biology, The Rappaport Faculty of Medicine and Research Institute, Technion - Israel Institute of Technology, Haifa 3109601, Israel. Electronic address:
Reproductive organs are among the most variable and rapidly evolving structures in the animal kingdom, probably due to sexual selection. In insects, the diverse morphology of male genitalia is often one of the few visible characteristics that can reliably distinguish closely related species, making it crucial for taxonomic classification. Consistent with this, males of the model organism Drosophila melanogaster and its closely related species display remarkable variations in genital morphology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFAppl Environ Microbiol
January 2025
CAS Key Laboratory of Tropical Marine Bio-resources and Ecology, Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Applied Marine Biology, South China Sea Institute of Oceanology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Guangzhou, China.
Sexual reproduction and recruitment enhance the genetic diversity and evolution of reef-building corals for population recovery and coral reef conservation under climate change. However, new recruits are vulnerable to physical changes and the mechanisms of symbiosis establishment remain poorly understood. Here, , a broadcast spawning hermaphrodite reef-building coral, was subjected to settlement and juvenile growth in flow-through seawater at 27.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEvolution
January 2025
Department of Biological Sciences, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA, 15282, United States.
Male reproductive proteins frequently evolve rapidly in animals, potentially due to adaptive evolution driven by sperm competition, polyspermy avoidance, or pathogen defense. Alternatively, elevated rates of protein change may be due to relaxed constraint. The prostate-specific protease KLK3 has experienced dynamic evolution since its origin stemming from a gene duplication in the ancestor of all Old World primates, with instances of rapid evolution, stasis, and pseudogenization.
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