Do allopatric maleCalopteryx virgodamselflies learn species recognition?
| Autor: | Elina Haukilehto, Kaisa J. Raatikainen, Janne S. Kotiaho, Harri Högmander, Katja Kuitunen, Minna Miettinen, Hanne Hakkarainen |
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| Rok vydání: | 2012 |
| Předmět: |
0106 biological sciences
0303 health sciences Natural selection Calopteryx virgo Ecology biology Allopatric speciation Zoology Reproductive isolation Odonata biology.organism_classification 010603 evolutionary biology 01 natural sciences Associative learning 03 medical and health sciences Damselfly Association (psychology) Ecology Evolution Behavior and Systematics 030304 developmental biology Nature and Landscape Conservation |
| Zdroj: | Ecology and Evolution. 2:615-621 |
| ISSN: | 2045-7758 |
| DOI: | 10.1002/ece3.90 |
| Popis: | There is a growing amount of empirical evidence that premating reproductive isolation of two closely related species can be reinforced by natural selection arising from avoidance of maladaptive hybridization. However, as an alternative for this popular reinforcement theory, it has been suggested that learning to prefer conspecifics or to discriminate heterospecifics could cause a similar pattern of reinforced premating isolation, but this possibility is much less studied. Here, we report results of a field experiment in which we examined (i) whether allopatric Calopteryx virgo damselfly males that have not encountered heterospecific females of the congener C. splendens initially show discrimination, and (ii) whether C. virgo males learn to discriminate heterospecifics or learn to associate with conspecifics during repeated experimental presentation of females. Our experiment revealed that there was a statistically nonsignificant tendency for C. virgo males to show initial discrimination against heterospecific females but because we did not use sexually naive individuals in our experiment, we were not able to separate the effect of innate or associative learning. More importantly, however, our study revealed that species discrimination might be further strengthened by learning, especially so that C. virgo males increase their association with conspecific females during repeated presentation trials. The role of learning to discriminate C. splendens females was less clear. We conclude that learning might play a role in species recognition also when individuals are not naive but have already encountered potential conspecific mates. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
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