Recommended Citation
Postprint version. Published in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Volume 272, Issue 1577, October 22, 2005, pages 2181-2188.
NOTE: At the time of publication, the author Gita Kolluru was not yet affiliated with Cal Poly.
The definitive version is available at https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2005.3197.
Abstract
Regardless of their origins, mate preferences should, in theory, be shaped by their benefits in a mating context. Here we show that the female preference for carotenoid colouration in guppies (Poecilia reticulata) exhibits a phenotypically plastic response to carotenoid availability, confirming a key prediction of sexual selection theory. Earlier work indicated that this mate preference is genetically linked to, and may be derived from, a sensory bias that occurs in both sexes: attraction to orange objects. The original function of this sensory bias is unknown, but it may help guppies find orange-coloured fruits in the rainforest streams of Trinidad. We show that the sensory bias also exhibits a phenotypically plastic response to carotenoid availability, but only in females. The sex-specificity of this reaction norm argues against the hypothesis that it evolved in a foraging context. We infer instead that the sensory bias has been modified as a correlated effect of selection on the mate preference. These results provide a new type of support for the hypothesis that mate preferences for sexual characters evolve in response to the benefits of mate choice—the alternatives being that such preferences evolve entirely in a non-mating context or in response to the costs of mating.
Disciplines
Biology
Copyright
2005 The Royal Society.
URL: https://digitalcommons.calpoly.edu/bio_fac/107