Quantitative genetic evidence that males trade attractiveness for ejaculate quality in guppies

JP Evans - Proceedings of the Royal Society B …, 2010 - royalsocietypublishing.org
Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, 2010royalsocietypublishing.org
Polyandry, where females mate with multiple males, means that a male's reproductive
success will depend both on his ability to acquire mates and the ability of his sperm to
compete effectively for fertilizations. But, how do males partition their reproductive
investment between these two episodes of selection? Theory predicts that increases in
ejaculate investment will come at a cost to investment in other reproductive traits. Although
evidence revealing such trade-offs is accumulating, we know little about their genetic basis …
Polyandry, where females mate with multiple males, means that a male's reproductive success will depend both on his ability to acquire mates and the ability of his sperm to compete effectively for fertilizations. But, how do males partition their reproductive investment between these two episodes of selection? Theory predicts that increases in ejaculate investment will come at a cost to investment in other reproductive traits. Although evidence revealing such trade-offs is accumulating, we know little about their genetic basis. Here, I report patterns of genetic (co)variation for a range of traits subject to pre- and post-copulatory sexual selection in the guppy Poecilia reticulata, a promiscuous livebearing fish in which males alternate between courtship and sneak matings to obtain copulations. The analyses of genetic variation and covariation for these behaviours revealed a strong genetic predisposition for one tactic over the other. Both mating tactics were also strongly genetically integrated with the level of sexual ornamentation and ejaculate quality. Males that predominantly performed sneak matings were less ornamented but had faster swimming sperm than those that predominantly used courtship. These patterns of genetic variation and covariation reveal potential evolutionary constraints on the direction of selection of pre- and post-copulatory traits, and support sperm competition theory by revealing a trade-off between sexual attractiveness and investment in ejaculates.
royalsocietypublishing.org
以上显示的是最相近的搜索结果。 查看全部搜索结果