Unraveling the Effects of Selection on Correlated Traits

摘要 PI：Ryan方案编号：9641522 雌性通常根据雄性的显著特征来选择配偶。 对各种分类群的研究表明，雌性在评价配偶时会注意到声音、视觉或化学线索。 尽管男性可以拥有一系列影响其对女性吸引力的特征，但大多数研究都是研究女性对单一特征的偏好。 这就留下了一个悬而未决的问题，即女性的偏好在保持一系列特征中扮演了什么角色。 女性的偏好决定了男性特征的相关程度吗？ 或者，女性更喜欢一个或几个男性特征，而由此产生的特征群是由于各种因素限制了男性特征的存在？ 例如，如果女性喜欢较长的男性，而不关注整体体重，这种偏好将导致她们优先与较长和较重的男性交配，因为身体长度和体重通常是相关的。 很难确定女性在视觉领域对多种特征的偏好，因为技术还没有很容易地将特征从一个男性变成另一个男性。 我们将利用视频技术的最新进展，这将使我们能够确定女性的喜好在解释男性身体性别，剑的长度，和复杂的求偶行为在三种剑尾鱼的相关程度的作用。 这些研究有望提供对性别差异如何以及为何存在的一般性问题的见解

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