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Colour pattern predicts outcome of female contest competition in a sexually monomorphic fish

Selection arising from social competition over non-mating resources, i.e. resources that do not directly and immediately affect mating success, offers a powerful alternative to sexual selection to explain the evolution of conspicuous ornaments, particularly in females. Here, we address the hypothesi...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Ziegelbecker, Angelika, Richter, Florian, Sefc, Kristina M.
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society 2018
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6283925/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30404866
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2018.0480
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author Ziegelbecker, Angelika
Richter, Florian
Sefc, Kristina M.
author_facet Ziegelbecker, Angelika
Richter, Florian
Sefc, Kristina M.
author_sort Ziegelbecker, Angelika
collection PubMed
description Selection arising from social competition over non-mating resources, i.e. resources that do not directly and immediately affect mating success, offers a powerful alternative to sexual selection to explain the evolution of conspicuous ornaments, particularly in females. Here, we address the hypothesis that competition associated with the territoriality exhibited by both males and females in the cichlid fish Tropheus selects for the display of a conspicuous colour pattern in both sexes. The investigated pattern consists of a vertical carotenoid-coloured bar on a black body. Bar width affected the probability of winning in size-matched female–female, but not male–male, contests for territory possession. Our results support the idea that the emergence of female territoriality contributed to the evolution of sexual monomorphism from a dimorphic ancestor, in that females acquired the same conspicuous coloration as males to communicate in contest competition.
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spelling pubmed-62839252018-12-15 Colour pattern predicts outcome of female contest competition in a sexually monomorphic fish Ziegelbecker, Angelika Richter, Florian Sefc, Kristina M. Biol Lett Evolutionary Biology Selection arising from social competition over non-mating resources, i.e. resources that do not directly and immediately affect mating success, offers a powerful alternative to sexual selection to explain the evolution of conspicuous ornaments, particularly in females. Here, we address the hypothesis that competition associated with the territoriality exhibited by both males and females in the cichlid fish Tropheus selects for the display of a conspicuous colour pattern in both sexes. The investigated pattern consists of a vertical carotenoid-coloured bar on a black body. Bar width affected the probability of winning in size-matched female–female, but not male–male, contests for territory possession. Our results support the idea that the emergence of female territoriality contributed to the evolution of sexual monomorphism from a dimorphic ancestor, in that females acquired the same conspicuous coloration as males to communicate in contest competition. The Royal Society 2018-11 2018-11-07 /pmc/articles/PMC6283925/ /pubmed/30404866 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2018.0480 Text en © 2018 The Authors. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Evolutionary Biology
Ziegelbecker, Angelika
Richter, Florian
Sefc, Kristina M.
Colour pattern predicts outcome of female contest competition in a sexually monomorphic fish
title Colour pattern predicts outcome of female contest competition in a sexually monomorphic fish
title_full Colour pattern predicts outcome of female contest competition in a sexually monomorphic fish
title_fullStr Colour pattern predicts outcome of female contest competition in a sexually monomorphic fish
title_full_unstemmed Colour pattern predicts outcome of female contest competition in a sexually monomorphic fish
title_short Colour pattern predicts outcome of female contest competition in a sexually monomorphic fish
title_sort colour pattern predicts outcome of female contest competition in a sexually monomorphic fish
topic Evolutionary Biology
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6283925/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/30404866
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2018.0480
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