AbstractThe lifestyle of symbiotic species in the genus can vary from pair living to eusocial. A pair-living social system commonly implies the adoption of a monogamous mating system. In this study, we used the symbiotic shrimp in association with the sponge sp. to test the hypothesis that heterosexual pairs of symbiotic shrimps can adopt a monogamous mating system when living in association with a morphologically complex host. We collected a total of 40 sponges, which were inhabited by 76 shrimps: 41 males, 33 females, and 2 juveniles. is sexually dimorphic, with males displaying proportionately larger weaponry (snapping claws) and a smaller average body size than females. Sponges were more often inhabited by a pair of heterosexual shrimps than expected by chance. Larger sponges were inhabited by more than one pair of shrimps in which the sex ratio did not differ significantly from 1∶1. Pairs of heterosexual shrimps were recorded, with females carrying embryos in all stages of embryonic development. Our results indicate that is a pair-living shrimp with a monogamous social and mating system that may also guard spaces or areas within its sponge host. Our hypothesis of monogamy is supported by the observations on pair living, sex ratio, and sexual dimorphism in body size and weaponry in this species.
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Animals (Basel)
December 2024
Chengdu Institute of Biology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Chengdu 610041, China.
The social complexity hypothesis suggests that complex social interactions drive the evolution of sophisticated communicative signals. While the relationship between social communication and the complexity of sound and color signals has been extensively studied, the correlation between social communication and movement-based visual signal complexity remains underexplored. In this study, we selected the Asian agamid lizard, , as our model system.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMol Phylogenet Evol
January 2025
Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology and University of Michigan Herbarium, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA.
Lorchels, also known as false morels (Gyromitra sensu lato), are iconic due to their brain-shaped mushrooms and production of gyromitrin, a deadly mycotoxin. Molecular phylogenetic studies have hitherto failed to resolve deep-branching relationships in the lorchel family, Discinaceae, hampering our ability to settle longstanding taxonomic debates and to reconstruct the evolution of toxin production. We generated 75 draft genomes from cultures and ascomata (some collected as early as 1960), conducted phylogenomic analyses using 1542 single-copy orthologs to infer the early evolutionary history of lorchels, and identified genomic signatures of trophic mode and mating-type loci to better understand lorchel ecology and reproductive biology.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFR Soc Open Sci
January 2025
Sea Mammal Research Unit, Scottish Oceans Institute, School of Biology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, Fife KY16 8LB, UK.
Variation in reproductive success is a fundamental prerequisite for sexual selection to act upon a trait. Assessing such variation is crucial in understanding a species' mating system and offers insights into population growth. Parentage analyses in cetaceans are rare, and the underlying forces of sexual selection acting on their mating behaviours remain poorly understood.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFNaturwissenschaften
January 2025
Institute for Animal Cell and Systems Biology, University of Hamburg, Martin-Luther-King Platz 3, Hamburg, 20146, Germany.
Physiological or genetic assays and computational modeling are valuable tools for understanding animals' visual discrimination capabilities. Yet sometimes, the results generated by these methods appear not to jive with other aspects of an animal's appearance or natural history, and behavioral confirmatory tests are warranted. Here we examine the peculiar case of a male jumping spider that displays red, black, white, and UV color patches during courtship despite the fact that, according to microspectrophotometry and color vision modeling, they are unlikely able to discriminate red from black.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFProc Biol Sci
January 2025
Department of Ornithology, Max Planck Institute for Biological Intelligence, Eberhard-Gwinner Strasse, Seewiesen 82319, Germany.
The traditional narrative of the life cycle of migratory birds is that individuals perform long-distance movements between a breeding and a wintering site, but are largely resident at those sites. Although this pattern may apply to socially monogamous species with biparental care, in polygamous systems, the sex that only provides gametes may benefit from continuing to move and sample several potential breeding sites during a single breeding season. Such behaviour would blur the distinction between migration and breeding.
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