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The Evolutionary Consequences of Disrupted Male Mating Signals: An Agent-Based Modelling Exploration of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals in the Guppy

Females may select a mate based on signalling traits that are believed to accurately correlate with heritable aspects of male quality. Anthropogenic actions, in particular chemicals released into the environment, are now disrupting the accuracy of mating signals to convey information about male qual...

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Autores principales: Senior, Alistair McNair, Nakagawa, Shinichi, Grimm, Volker
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2014
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4105596/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25047080
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0103100
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author Senior, Alistair McNair
Nakagawa, Shinichi
Grimm, Volker
author_facet Senior, Alistair McNair
Nakagawa, Shinichi
Grimm, Volker
author_sort Senior, Alistair McNair
collection PubMed
description Females may select a mate based on signalling traits that are believed to accurately correlate with heritable aspects of male quality. Anthropogenic actions, in particular chemicals released into the environment, are now disrupting the accuracy of mating signals to convey information about male quality. The long-term prediction for disrupted mating signals is most commonly loss of female preference. Yet, this prediction has rarely been tested using quantitative models. We use agent-based models to explore the effects of rapid disruption of mating signals. In our model, a gene determines survival. Males signal their level of genetic quality via a signal trait, which females use to select a mate. We allowed this system of sexual selection to become established, before introducing a disruption between the male signal trait and quality, which was similar in nature to that induced by exogenous chemicals. Finally, we assessed the capacity of the system to recover from this disruption. We found that within a relatively short time frame, disruption of mating signals led to a lasting loss of female preference. Decreases in mean viability at the population-level were also observed, because sexual-selection acting against newly arising deleterious mutations was relaxed. The ability of the population to recover from disrupted mating signals was strongly influenced by the mechanisms that promoted or maintained genetic diversity in traits under sexual selection. Our simple model demonstrates that environmental perturbations to the accuracy of male mating signals can result in a long-term loss of female preference for those signals within a few generations. What is more, the loss of this preference can have knock-on consequences for mean population fitness.
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spelling pubmed-41055962014-07-23 The Evolutionary Consequences of Disrupted Male Mating Signals: An Agent-Based Modelling Exploration of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals in the Guppy Senior, Alistair McNair Nakagawa, Shinichi Grimm, Volker PLoS One Research Article Females may select a mate based on signalling traits that are believed to accurately correlate with heritable aspects of male quality. Anthropogenic actions, in particular chemicals released into the environment, are now disrupting the accuracy of mating signals to convey information about male quality. The long-term prediction for disrupted mating signals is most commonly loss of female preference. Yet, this prediction has rarely been tested using quantitative models. We use agent-based models to explore the effects of rapid disruption of mating signals. In our model, a gene determines survival. Males signal their level of genetic quality via a signal trait, which females use to select a mate. We allowed this system of sexual selection to become established, before introducing a disruption between the male signal trait and quality, which was similar in nature to that induced by exogenous chemicals. Finally, we assessed the capacity of the system to recover from this disruption. We found that within a relatively short time frame, disruption of mating signals led to a lasting loss of female preference. Decreases in mean viability at the population-level were also observed, because sexual-selection acting against newly arising deleterious mutations was relaxed. The ability of the population to recover from disrupted mating signals was strongly influenced by the mechanisms that promoted or maintained genetic diversity in traits under sexual selection. Our simple model demonstrates that environmental perturbations to the accuracy of male mating signals can result in a long-term loss of female preference for those signals within a few generations. What is more, the loss of this preference can have knock-on consequences for mean population fitness. Public Library of Science 2014-07-21 /pmc/articles/PMC4105596/ /pubmed/25047080 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0103100 Text en © 2014 Senior et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
spellingShingle Research Article
Senior, Alistair McNair
Nakagawa, Shinichi
Grimm, Volker
The Evolutionary Consequences of Disrupted Male Mating Signals: An Agent-Based Modelling Exploration of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals in the Guppy
title The Evolutionary Consequences of Disrupted Male Mating Signals: An Agent-Based Modelling Exploration of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals in the Guppy
title_full The Evolutionary Consequences of Disrupted Male Mating Signals: An Agent-Based Modelling Exploration of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals in the Guppy
title_fullStr The Evolutionary Consequences of Disrupted Male Mating Signals: An Agent-Based Modelling Exploration of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals in the Guppy
title_full_unstemmed The Evolutionary Consequences of Disrupted Male Mating Signals: An Agent-Based Modelling Exploration of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals in the Guppy
title_short The Evolutionary Consequences of Disrupted Male Mating Signals: An Agent-Based Modelling Exploration of Endocrine Disrupting Chemicals in the Guppy
title_sort evolutionary consequences of disrupted male mating signals: an agent-based modelling exploration of endocrine disrupting chemicals in the guppy
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4105596/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25047080
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0103100
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