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Adaptive switch to sexually dimorphic movements by partner-seeking termites

How should females and males move to search for partners whose exact location is unknown? Theory predicts that the answer depends on what they know about where targets can be found, raising the question of how actual animals update their mate search patterns to increase encounter probability when co...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Mizumoto, Nobuaki, Dobata, Shigeto
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: American Association for the Advancement of Science 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6584256/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31223644
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aau6108
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author Mizumoto, Nobuaki
Dobata, Shigeto
author_facet Mizumoto, Nobuaki
Dobata, Shigeto
author_sort Mizumoto, Nobuaki
collection PubMed
description How should females and males move to search for partners whose exact location is unknown? Theory predicts that the answer depends on what they know about where targets can be found, raising the question of how actual animals update their mate search patterns to increase encounter probability when conditions change. Here, we show that termites adaptively alternate between sexually monomorphic and dimorphic movements during mate search. When the location of potential mates was completely unpredictable, both sexes moved in straight lines to explore widely. In contrast, when the stray partner was at least nearby, males moved while females paused. Data-based simulations confirmed that these movements increase the rate of successful encounters. The context-dependent switch of search modes is a key to enhance random encounters.
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spelling pubmed-65842562019-06-20 Adaptive switch to sexually dimorphic movements by partner-seeking termites Mizumoto, Nobuaki Dobata, Shigeto Sci Adv Research Articles How should females and males move to search for partners whose exact location is unknown? Theory predicts that the answer depends on what they know about where targets can be found, raising the question of how actual animals update their mate search patterns to increase encounter probability when conditions change. Here, we show that termites adaptively alternate between sexually monomorphic and dimorphic movements during mate search. When the location of potential mates was completely unpredictable, both sexes moved in straight lines to explore widely. In contrast, when the stray partner was at least nearby, males moved while females paused. Data-based simulations confirmed that these movements increase the rate of successful encounters. The context-dependent switch of search modes is a key to enhance random encounters. American Association for the Advancement of Science 2019-06-19 /pmc/articles/PMC6584256/ /pubmed/31223644 http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aau6108 Text en Copyright © 2019 The Authors, some rights reserved; exclusive licensee American Association for the Advancement of Science. No claim to original U.S. Government Works. Distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0 (CC BY). http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
spellingShingle Research Articles
Mizumoto, Nobuaki
Dobata, Shigeto
Adaptive switch to sexually dimorphic movements by partner-seeking termites
title Adaptive switch to sexually dimorphic movements by partner-seeking termites
title_full Adaptive switch to sexually dimorphic movements by partner-seeking termites
title_fullStr Adaptive switch to sexually dimorphic movements by partner-seeking termites
title_full_unstemmed Adaptive switch to sexually dimorphic movements by partner-seeking termites
title_short Adaptive switch to sexually dimorphic movements by partner-seeking termites
title_sort adaptive switch to sexually dimorphic movements by partner-seeking termites
topic Research Articles
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6584256/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31223644
http://dx.doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.aau6108
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