Unraveling the Effects of Selection on Correlated Traits

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ABSTRACT PI: Ryan PROPOSAL NUMBER: 9641522 Females often base their choice of mates on conspicuous traits borne by males. Studies in a variety of taxa show that females attend to acoustic, visual, or chemical cues when evaluating mates. Although males can possess suites of traits that influence their attractiveness to females, most studies, however, examine female preferences for single traits. This leaves unresolved the issue as to what role female preferences play in maintaining suites of traits. Do female s exert preferences that determine the extent to which male traits are correlated? Or, alternatively, do females prefer a single or perhaps a few male traits, and the resultant constellation of traits is due to various factors that constrain the presence of male traits? For example, if female were to prefer longer males with no attention to overall body mass, this preference would result in them mating preferentially with longer and heavier males since body length and body mass are usually correlated. It has been difficult to ascertain female preferences for multiple traits in the visual domain because technology has not been available to easily animate and morph traits from one male onto another. We will utilize recent advances in video technology that will allow us to determine the role of female preferences in explaining the degree of correlation of male body sexes, sword length, and complex courtship behavior in three species of swordtail fishes. These studies promise to provide insights into the general question as to how and why the sexes differ as they do