Color Assortative Mating in a Mainland Population of the Poison Frog <i>Oophaga pumilio</i>

Gade, Meaghan R.; Hill, Michelle; Saporito, Ralph A.

doi:10.1111/eth.12533

Cited by 17 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 52 publications

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“…Over time, color ornament-fitness linkages may thus diverge between males and females, making it important for studies to explore those linkages in both sexes to better understand the drivers and consequences of non-random mating behavior and, more importantly, the evolutionary significance of color assortment behavior (or lack thereof). Between our two studies on U. ornatus, we found no evidence of assortment, even though color-assortative mating has been identified in other polymorphic systems (but see Acord, Anthony, & Hickerson, 2013;Gade et al, 2016;Pérez i de Lanuza et al, 2013;Pryke & Griffith, 2007). We also recognize that we are unable to rule out the possibility that mating preferences are temporally flexible in U. ornatus, such that mate preferences by either sex vary from season to season or by year (e.g., Chaine & Lyon, 2008).…”

Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 57%

“…This clear covariation between male quality and choosiness in blue males may also partly drive sexual selection on female ornamentation in U. ornatus (e.g., Fitzpatrick & Servedio, 2017). The contribution of male preference to mating dynamics in other polymorphic species, as well as the extent of its association with any inferred morph behavioral strategies, remains unclear (e.g., Gade, Hill, & Saporito, 2016;Pérez i de Lanuza et al, 2013;Yang, Richards-Zawacki, Devar, & Dugas, 2016).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Male mate choice and the potential for complex mating dynamics in the tree lizard (Urosaurus ornatus)

2018

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A growing body of literature is recognizing that males may also play a role in the mating process by behaving non‐randomly toward potential female mates during courtship. In numerous species, discrete color polymorphisms in males are inferred to represent alternative mating tactics, which often correspond with concomitant asymmetries in ecology and behavior. In terms of their mating behavior, these ecological outcomes of a color polymorphism should affect a morph's likelihood and frequency of encountering females in a population, possibly favoring the evolution of morph‐specific mating preferences. Knowledge of how male morphs contribute to a species’ overall mating dynamics will improve our understanding of how sexual selection shapes phenotypic diversity in color polymorphic systems. We conducted a mate choice experiment to evaluate the extent and morph specificity of non‐random mating preferences by male ornate tree lizards, Urosaurus ornatus. We observed the behavior of blue and yellow males in an experimental arena in response to a choice between an orange or yellow female. We found that blue males preferred yellow females over orange females, and although yellow males visited females more often than blue males overall, their attention was not morph‐specific. Given male morph differences in choosiness, and their differences in social dominance, we conclude that female throat color may be partly under sexual selection in U. ornatus. However, a lack of concordance between male and female mating preferences (drawn from an earlier study) suggests that overall mating dynamics may serve to maintain, rather than enhance, color morph differences in this species.

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Section: Discussioncontrasting

confidence: 57%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Male mate choice and the potential for complex mating dynamics in the tree lizard (Urosaurus ornatus)

2018

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“…Call parameters across the red–blue transition zone do not differ among populations or colour morphs (M. L. Dye, unpublished data ), so we used the same call in all trials (see Supporting Information for details). This design enabled us to control the stimuli and take notes from > 1.5 m away, a distance that does not disturb males (Staudt et al ., ; Gade et al ., ). All trials were recorded using a video camera (icools Black Wifi Sports Camera) mounted on the stimulus apparatus.…”

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 97%

Male–male aggression is unlikely to stabilize a poison frog polymorphism

Yang

Dugas

Sudekum

et al. 2018

J of Evolutionary Biology

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Phenotypic polymorphism is common in animals, and the maintenance of multiple phenotypes in a population requires forces that act against homogenizing drift and selection. Male-male competition can contribute to the stability of a polymorphism when males compete primarily with males of the same phenotype. In and around a contact zone between red and blue lineages of the poison frog Oophaga pumilio, we used simulated territorial intrusions to test the nonexclusive predictions that males would direct more aggression towards males of (i) their own phenotype and/or (ii) the phenotype that is most common in their population. Males in the monomorphic red and blue populations that flank the contact zone were more aggressive towards simulated intruders that matched the local coloration. However, males in the two polymorphic populations biased aggression towards neither their own colour nor the colour most common in their population. In sympatry, the rarer colour morph gains no advantage via reduced male-male aggression from territorial males in these O. pumilio populations, and so male aggression seems unlikely to stabilize colour polymorphism on its own. More broadly, these results suggest that the potential for divergent male aggression biases to maintain phenotypic diversity depends on the mechanism(s) that generate the biases and the degree to which these mechanisms persist in sympatry.

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“…Even though in this study, the frogs were situated in a no‐choice situation, it demonstrates that females accept nonassortative partners when no color‐assortative partners are present. Up to now, only one study conducted behavioral observations of natural, not manipulated mating behavior in the field and confirmed dorsal color‐assortative mating in a mainland population in Costa Rica (Gade, Hill, & Saporito, ). Thus, research investigating natural mate choice under field conditions is still scarce (Dreher & Pröhl, ; Gade et al., ; Richards‐Zawacki et al., ), and is explicitly addressed here.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 86%

Mating status correlates with dorsal brightness in some but not all poison frog populations

Dreher

Rodríguez

Cummings

et al. 2017

Ecology and Evolution

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Sexual signals are important for intraspecific communication and mate selection, but their evolution may be driven by both natural and sexual selection, and stochastic processes. Strawberry poison frogs (Oophaga pumilio) show strong color divergence among populations, but coloration also varies among individuals of the same population. The importance of coloration for female mate choice has been studied intensely, and sexual selection seems to affect color divergence in strawberry poison frogs. However, the effect of coloration on mating success under field conditions has received very little attention. Furthermore, few studies examined how phenotypic variation among individuals of the same color morph affects mate selection under natural conditions. We measured the spectral reflectance of courting and noncourting individuals and their background substrates in three geographically separated populations. In one population (Sarapiquí, Costa Rica), we found that naturally occurring courting pairs of males and females had significantly brighter dorsal coloration than individual males and females not engaged in courtship interactions. Our field observations suggest that, in the wild, females prefer brighter males while the reason for the higher courtship activity of brighter females remains unclear. Overall our results imply that brightness differences among individuals of the same color morph may actually affect reproductive success in some populations of strawberry poison frogs.

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Color Assortative Mating in a Mainland Population of the Poison Frog Oophaga pumilio

Cited by 17 publications

References 52 publications

Male mate choice and the potential for complex mating dynamics in the tree lizard (Urosaurus ornatus)

Male mate choice and the potential for complex mating dynamics in the tree lizard (Urosaurus ornatus)

Male–male aggression is unlikely to stabilize a poison frog polymorphism

Mating status correlates with dorsal brightness in some but not all poison frog populations

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