Ornaments indicate parasite load only if they are dynamic or parasites are contagious.

Autor:	Dougherty LR; Department of Evolution, Ecology and Behaviour, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom., Rovenolt F; Department of Biological Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, United States., Luyet A; Department of Aquatic Ecology, EAWAG, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Dübendorf, Switzerland.; Institute for Integrative Biology, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland., Jokela J; Department of Aquatic Ecology, EAWAG, Swiss Federal Institute of Aquatic Science and Technology, Dübendorf, Switzerland.; Institute for Integrative Biology, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland., Stephenson JF; Department of Biological Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, United States.
Jazyk:	angličtina
Zdroj:	Evolution letters [Evol Lett] 2023 May 25; Vol. 7 (3), pp. 176-190. Date of Electronic Publication: 2023 May 25 (Print Publication: 2023).
DOI:	10.1093/evlett/qrad017
Abstrakt:	Choosing to mate with an infected partner has several potential fitness costs, including disease transmission and infection-induced reductions in fecundity and parental care. By instead choosing a mate with no, or few, parasites, animals avoid these costs and may also obtain resistance genes for offspring. Within a population, then, the quality of sexually selected ornaments on which mate choice is based should correlate negatively with the number of parasites with which a host is infected ("parasite load"). However, the hundreds of tests of this prediction yield positive, negative, or no correlation between parasite load and ornament quality. Here, we use phylogenetically controlled meta-analysis of 424 correlations from 142 studies on a wide range of host and parasite taxa to evaluate explanations for this ambiguity. We found that ornament quality is weakly negatively correlated with parasite load overall, but the relationship is more strongly negative among ornaments that can dynamically change in quality, such as behavioral displays and skin pigmentation, and thus can accurately reflect current parasite load. The relationship was also more strongly negative among parasites that can transmit during sex. Thus, the direct benefit of avoiding parasite transmission may be a key driver of parasite-mediated sexual selection. No other moderators, including methodological details and whether males exhibit parental care, explained the substantial heterogeneity in our data set. We hope to stimulate research that more inclusively considers the many and varied ways in which parasites, sexual selection, and epidemiology intersect. (© The Author(s) 2023. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of The Society for the Study of Evolution (SSE) and European Society for Evolutionary Biology (ESEN).)
Databáze:	MEDLINE
Externí odkaz:	Zobrazit plný text záznamu