Preprints

Filtering by Subject: Behavior and Ethology

Supergenes on Steroids

Donna Maney, Clemens Küpper

Published: 2021-09-09
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Genetics and Genomics, Genomics, Life Sciences

At the birth of supergenes, the genomic landscape is dramatically re-organized leading to pronounced differences in phenotypes and increased intrasexual diversity. Two of the best- studied supergenes in vertebrates are arguably the inversion polymorphisms on chromosomes 2 and 11 in the white-throated sparrow (Zonotrichia albicollis) and the ruff (Calidris pugnax), respectively. In both species, [...]

Contribution of anther color to interaction between plants and flower-visiting arthropods – usefulness of bioresource stocks

Koichi Sugimoto, Tomoyuki Yokoi

Published: 2021-09-07
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

It is very difficult to provide strong evidence of how flower characteristic that may serve to attract pollinators, improve plant fitness. We propose to use the natural variation that we have observed within our wild tomato (Solanum pimpinellifolium) plant stocks to investigate the effect of anther color on attracting flower-visiting arthropods which act as pollinators. By looking at [...]

A method for low-cost, low-impact insect tracking using retroreflective tags

Michael Smith, Michael Livingstone, Richard Comont

Published: 2021-09-06
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Current methods for direct tracking of individual bee movement behaviour have several limitations. In particular, the weight and size of some types of electronic tag may limit their use to larger species. Radars and other electronic systems are also often large and very expensive to deploy. A tool is needed that complements these electronic-tag methods. In particular one that is simple to use, [...]

Hybridization may promote variation in cognitive phenotypes in experimental guppy hybrids

Catarina Vila Pouca, Sijmen Vedder, Alexander Kotrschal

Published: 2021-09-04
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences

Hybridization is an important mechanism of evolution. While hybrids often express inferior traits and are selected against, hybridization can promote phenotypic variation and produce trait combinations distinct from the parentals, generating novel adaptive potential. Among other traits, hybridization can impact behaviour and cognition and may reinforce species boundaries when hybrids show [...]

Breeding in the pandemic: short-term lockdown restrictions do not alter reproductive decisions and avian life-history traits in a European capital city

Michela Corsini, Zuzanna Jagiello, Michal Walesiak, et al.

Published: 2021-09-01
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Humans are transforming natural habitats into managed urban green areas and impervious surfaces with unprecedented pace. Yet the effects of human presence per se on animal life-history traits are rarely tested. This is particularly true in cities, where human presence is often indissociable from urbanisation itself. The onset of the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, along with the resulting lockdown [...]

The effect of brief or prolonged bouts of winning or losing male-male contests on plasticity in sexually selected traits

Lauren Maree Harrison, Regina Vega-Trejo, Michael Jennions

Published: 2021-08-28
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences

Fight outcomes often affect male fitness by determining their access to mates. Thus ‘winner-loser’ effects, where winners often win their next contest, while losers tend to lose, can influence how males allocate resources towards pre- and post-copulatory traits. We experimentally manipulated the winning/losing experiences of pairs of size-matched male Gambusia holbrooki for either a day, a week [...]

The evolutionary relevance of social learning and transmission of behaviors in non-social arthropods

Caroline M. Nieberding, Matteo Marcantonio, Raluca Voda, et al.

Published: 2021-08-05
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Entomology, Evolution, Life Sciences

Research on social learning has centered around vertebrates, but evidence is accumulating that small-brained, non-social arthropods also learn from others. Social learning can lead to social inheritance when socially acquired behaviors are transmitted to subsequent generations. Here, we first highlight the complementarities between social and classical genetic inheritance, using oviposition site [...]

The ecology of wealth inequality in animal societies

Eli Strauss, Daizaburo Shizuka

Published: 2021-07-14
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Integrative Biology, Life Sciences

Individuals vary in their access to resources, social connections, and phenotypic traits, and a central goal of evolutionary biology is to understand how this variation arises and influences fitness. Parallel research on humans has focused on the causes and consequences of variation in material possessions, opportunity, and health. Central to both fields of study is that unequal distribution of [...]

Integrating natural and sexual selection across the biphasic life cycle

Craig Purchase, Jonathan Evans, Julissa Roncal

Published: 2021-06-24
Subjects: Agriculture, Behavior and Ethology, Cell and Developmental Biology, Developmental Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Food Biotechnology, Food Science, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

An alternation between diploid and haploid phases is universal among sexual eukaryotes. Across this biphasic cycle, natural selection and sexual selection occur in both phases. Together, these four stages of selection act on the phenotypes of individuals and influence the evolutionary trajectories of populations, but are rarely studied holistically. Here, we provide a conceptual framework that [...]

Species comparison of among- and within-individual variation and correlations

Jeremy Dalos, Raphaël Royauté, Ann Hedrick, et al.

Published: 2021-05-20
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences

Individuals frequently differ consistently from one another in their average behaviors (i.e. “animal personality”) and in correlated suites of consistent behavioral responses (i.e. “behavioral syndromes”). However, understanding the evolutionary basis of this (co)variation has lagged behind demonstrations of its presence. This lag partially stems from comparative methods rarely being used in the [...]

Male age alone predicts paternity success under sperm competition when effects of age and past mating effort are experimentally separated

Upama Aich, Megan Head, Rebecca Fox, et al.

Published: 2021-05-10
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences, Other Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

Older males often perform poorly under post-copulatory sexual selection. It is unclear, however, whether reproductive senescence is due to male age itself or the accumulated costs of the higher lifetime mating effort that is usually associated with male age. To date, very few studies have accounted for male mating history when testing for the effect of male age on sperm traits, and none test how [...]

Implementing network approaches to understand the socioecology of human-wildlife interactions

Krishna Balasubramaniam, Stefano Kaburu, Pascal Marty, et al.

Published: 2021-05-05
Subjects: Animal Sciences, Anthropology, Behavior and Ethology, Biological and Physical Anthropology, Biology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences, Social and Behavioral Sciences

Human population expansion into wildlife habitats has increased interest in the behavioral ecology of human-wildlife interactions. To date, however, the socio-ecological factors that determine whether, when or where wild animals take risks by interacting with humans and anthropogenic factors still remains unclear. We adopt a comparative approach to address this gap, using social network analysis [...]

Sex-specific behavioral syndromes allow the independent evolution of behavioral dimorphism

Raphaël Royauté, Ann Hedrick, Ned A Dochtermann

Published: 2021-04-27
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Evolution, Life Sciences

When selection differs by sex, the capacity for sexes to reach optimal phenotypes can be constrained by the shared genome of males and females. Because phenotypic traits are often correlated, this difference extends across multiple traits and underlying genetic correlations can further constrain evolutionary responses. Behaviors are frequently correlated as behavioral syndromes, and these [...]

Terminology use in animal personality research: a self-report questionnaire and a systematic review

Alfredo Sánchez-Tójar, Maria Moiron, Petri Toivo Niemelä

Published: 2021-04-22
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

Whether animal personality studies provide insights of broader evolutionary and ecological relevance to the field of behavioural ecology is frequently questioned. One of the sources of controversy is the vast, but often vague terminology present in the field. From a statistical perspective, animal personality is defined as among-individual variance in behaviour. However, numerous conceptual [...]

How feedback and feed-forward mechanisms link determinants of social dominance

Tobit Dehnen, Josh J. Arbon, Damien R. Farine, et al.

Published: 2021-04-20
Subjects: Behavior and Ethology, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Life Sciences

In many animal societies, individuals differ consistently in their ability to win agonistic interactions, resulting in dominance hierarchies. These differences arise due to a range of factors that can influence individuals’ abilities to win agonistic interactions, spanning from genetically driven traits through to individuals’ recent interaction history. Yet, despite a century of study since [...]

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