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Common cuckoo females may escape male sexual harassment by color polymorphism

Sexual conflict over mating rate is widely regarded as a selective force on the evolution of female-limited color polymorphism in invertebrates, such as damselflies and butterflies. However, evidence confirming its use in higher vertebrates remains limited. The common cuckoo, Cuculus canorus, is an...

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Autores principales: Lee, Jin-Won, Kim, Hae-Ni, Yoo, Sohyeon, Yoo, Jeong-Chil
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Nature Publishing Group UK 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6525237/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31101873
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-44024-6
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author Lee, Jin-Won
Kim, Hae-Ni
Yoo, Sohyeon
Yoo, Jeong-Chil
author_facet Lee, Jin-Won
Kim, Hae-Ni
Yoo, Sohyeon
Yoo, Jeong-Chil
author_sort Lee, Jin-Won
collection PubMed
description Sexual conflict over mating rate is widely regarded as a selective force on the evolution of female-limited color polymorphism in invertebrates, such as damselflies and butterflies. However, evidence confirming its use in higher vertebrates remains limited. The common cuckoo, Cuculus canorus, is an avian brood parasite that does not provide parental care and represents a rare example of female-limited polymorphism in higher vertebrates. Specifically, males exhibit a monomorphic gray morph, while females are either gray or rufous colored, like juveniles. To test a prediction from the hypothesis that the rufous plumage of female cuckoos may help avoid excessive sexual harassment by males (the harassment avoidance hypothesis), we investigate color morph preference in male cuckoos. Mate choice experiments using playbacks of female calls with decoys mimicking both color morphs indicated that the attracted males immediately copulated with decoys without courtship displays, recognizing both color morphs as a sexual partner. However, the males attempted to copulate more frequently and excessively with the gray morph, which is consistent with the prediction from the harassment avoidance hypothesis. We propose that the absence of parental care augments sexual conflict over mating in cuckoos, resulting in the unusual evolution of female-limited polymorphism in this higher vertebrate.
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spelling pubmed-65252372019-05-29 Common cuckoo females may escape male sexual harassment by color polymorphism Lee, Jin-Won Kim, Hae-Ni Yoo, Sohyeon Yoo, Jeong-Chil Sci Rep Article Sexual conflict over mating rate is widely regarded as a selective force on the evolution of female-limited color polymorphism in invertebrates, such as damselflies and butterflies. However, evidence confirming its use in higher vertebrates remains limited. The common cuckoo, Cuculus canorus, is an avian brood parasite that does not provide parental care and represents a rare example of female-limited polymorphism in higher vertebrates. Specifically, males exhibit a monomorphic gray morph, while females are either gray or rufous colored, like juveniles. To test a prediction from the hypothesis that the rufous plumage of female cuckoos may help avoid excessive sexual harassment by males (the harassment avoidance hypothesis), we investigate color morph preference in male cuckoos. Mate choice experiments using playbacks of female calls with decoys mimicking both color morphs indicated that the attracted males immediately copulated with decoys without courtship displays, recognizing both color morphs as a sexual partner. However, the males attempted to copulate more frequently and excessively with the gray morph, which is consistent with the prediction from the harassment avoidance hypothesis. We propose that the absence of parental care augments sexual conflict over mating in cuckoos, resulting in the unusual evolution of female-limited polymorphism in this higher vertebrate. Nature Publishing Group UK 2019-05-17 /pmc/articles/PMC6525237/ /pubmed/31101873 http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-44024-6 Text en © The Author(s) 2019 Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
spellingShingle Article
Lee, Jin-Won
Kim, Hae-Ni
Yoo, Sohyeon
Yoo, Jeong-Chil
Common cuckoo females may escape male sexual harassment by color polymorphism
title Common cuckoo females may escape male sexual harassment by color polymorphism
title_full Common cuckoo females may escape male sexual harassment by color polymorphism
title_fullStr Common cuckoo females may escape male sexual harassment by color polymorphism
title_full_unstemmed Common cuckoo females may escape male sexual harassment by color polymorphism
title_short Common cuckoo females may escape male sexual harassment by color polymorphism
title_sort common cuckoo females may escape male sexual harassment by color polymorphism
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6525237/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31101873
http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-44024-6
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