‘Sociability’ affects the intensity of mate-choice copying in female guppies, Poecilia reticulata

White, David J.; Watts, Eliza; Pitchforth, Kelsey; Agyapong, Samuel; Miller, Noam

doi:10.1016/j.beproc.2017.02.017

Cited by 13 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 84 publications

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“…In nonmonogamous species, mate copying (selecting a male that has been chosen by previous females) can be an effective way to choose a desirable mate. In guppies (P. reticulata), more-social females are more likely to switch their mate choice to match choices made by a model fish [57].…”

Section: How the Chooser's Bt Mattersmentioning

confidence: 99%

You’re Just My Type: Mate Choice and Behavioral Types

Munson

Jones

Schraft

et al. 2020

Trends in Ecology & Evolution

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Consistent individual differences in behavior [i.e., behavioral types (BTs)], are common across the animal kingdom. Consistency can make behavior an adaptive trait for mate choice decisions. Here, we present a conceptual framework to explain how and why females might evaluate a male's BT before mating. Because BTs are consistent across time or context, a male's BT can be a reliable indicator of his potential to provide direct benefits. Heritable BTs can enable informed mate choice via indirect benefits. Many key issues regarding patterns of mate choice, including sensory biases, context dependence, and assortative mating apply to BT-dependent mate choice. Understanding the relationship between BTs and mate choice may offer insights into patterns of variation and consistency common in behavioral traits. BTs and Mate ChoiceMate choice is often a key factor influencing the evolution of traits [1,2]. While sexual selection via mate choice likely has a special role as a major explanation for highly elaborated ornaments, it is not only important for explaining exaggerated, sex-specific traits. A new insight is that the choosy sex (typically females) may also select a mate based on their own and their potential mate's behavioral type (BT) (see Glossary); for example, boldness, aggressiveness, exploratory tendency, or sociability [3]. An individual is said to have a BT if its behavior is consistent across time or contexts (e.g., an individual that is more aggressive than another in a foraging context, also tends to be more aggressive in the future and/or more aggressive in a mating context) [4]. If males have consistent BTs, then male behavior observed by a female at one time and context (e.g., during courtship) provides information about his likely behavior in the past and future (e.g., during parental care). Importantly, the time scale of this correlation is not part of the definition for either human or animal personalities [4,5]. More persistent BTs (e.g., over a lifetime) presumably have greater potential to be impactful, particularly for species with long-term mating associations, but even short-term consistency (e.g., from courtship to nesting or parental behavior a few weeks later) can be important [6][7][8].With regard to mechanisms of adaptive mate choice, correlations between a potential mate's past, present, and future behaviors may determine the quality and quantity of expected direct benefits that he can provide (e.g., nuptial gifts, territory, or parental care) [3]. Within a breeding season, BTs allow a female to predict a male's future behavior towards her and her offspring, which may be particularly important for species that have paternal care, including territory defense and provisioning [9,10]. While consistency to the next breeding season is not necessarily important for all species, species that engage in long-term pair bonds may rely more heavily on BTs to determine long-term compatibility [11]. Furthermore, given that BTs are heritable (about half of BT variation is attributable to additive geneti...

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Section: How the Chooser's Bt Mattersmentioning

confidence: 99%

You’re Just My Type: Mate Choice and Behavioral Types

Munson

Jones

Schraft

et al. 2020

Trends in Ecology & Evolution

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“…This also matches with the finding of White et al . [ 23 ] that sociability in guppy females predicts mate-copying tendency. They defined sociability as proclivity to be with other females, which is at the same time a protection from male harassment.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…With few, but significant, exceptions (e.g. [8,[20][21][22]), the question of the impact of population heterogeneity has been neglected often in the context of social learning that constitutes the fundamental process of cultural transmission [23][24][25]. Most studies of social learning implicitly assume that the study population is homogeneous and composed of social learners.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The importance of population heterogeneities in detecting social learning as the foundation of animal cultural transmission

et al. 2022

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High levels of within-population behavioural variation can have drastic demographic consequences, thus changing the evolutionary fate of populations. A major source of within-population heterogeneity is personality. Nonetheless, it is still relatively rarely accounted for in social learning studies that constitute the most basic process of cultural transmission. Here, we performed in female mosquitofish ( Gambusia holbrooki ) a social learning experiment in the context of mate choice, a situation called mate copying (MC), and for which there is strong evidence that it can lead to the emergence of persistent traditions of preferring a given male phenotype. When accounting for the global tendency of females to prefer larger males but ignoring differences in personality, we detected no evidence for MC. However, when accounting for the bold–shy dichotomy, we found that bold females did not show any evidence for MC, while shy females showed significant amounts of MC. This illustrates how the presence of variation in personality can hamper our capacity to detect MC. We conclude that MC may be more widespread than we thought because many studies ignored the presence of within-population heterogeneities.

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“…what is known about social information theory and mate-choice copying. Recall that White et al (2017) demonstrated that more sociable female guppies were more likely to mate-choice copy than less sociable ones. I would predict that more sociable males would similarly be more likely to mate-choice copy.…”

Section: This Would Combinementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The likelihood of utilizing social information may be influenced by the 'personality' of a given individual. Indeed, in the Trinidadian guppy, White et al (2017) demonstrated that females that are more sociable were more likely to mate-choice copy than less sociable ones. However, there is usually a trade-off associated with the use of social and personal information in making behavioural decisions by individual animals (Kendal et al 2005 and Godin 1992).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Influences of male and female phenotypes on male mate-choice copying in the Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata)

Pusiak¹

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Mate-choice copying in males is a form of social learning whereby an observer male modifies his inherent mating preference after observing a model male sexually interact with a female he did not initially prefer, and copies the mate preference of the model male. Little is known about such copying behaviour in males and how the phenotypes of males and(or) females interact to influence the likelihood of mate-choice copying and the strength of the copying response. Using the Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata), I investigated whether the relative sexual attractiveness of males influences the likelihood of mate-choice copying in males, and found that the highest rates of copying occurred when the model male was less sexually attractive than the observer male. Second, I tested whether the relative difference in the body size of paired females influenced the likelihood of male mate-choice copying, and did not find any evidence for such an effect.iii

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‘Sociability’ affects the intensity of mate-choice copying in female guppies, Poecilia reticulata

Cited by 13 publications

References 84 publications

You’re Just My Type: Mate Choice and Behavioral Types

You’re Just My Type: Mate Choice and Behavioral Types

The importance of population heterogeneities in detecting social learning as the foundation of animal cultural transmission

Influences of male and female phenotypes on male mate-choice copying in the Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata)

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