Conflict, Social Behavior and Evolution

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This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5).Conflict between the sexes over control of fertilization is expected to be widespread among organisms, but its evolutionary consequences are still poorly understood particularly in vertebrate animals. Waterfowl have complex breeding systems that include female partner preferences based on elaborate male plumage and courtship display, and unsolicited reproductive attempts by males other than the female's chosen partner. Female ducks show resistance behaviors and anatomies that have coevolved with male coercion. Ducks are ideally suited to study the evolution of sexual conflict and the evolution of reproductive structures. The project examines how reproductive morphology covaries with season, age, and social environment in a diverse sample of duck species that differ in ecology, territoriality and breeding system. Preliminary results of the project, suggest that male competition plays an important role in the evolution of waterfowl reproductive morphology, that male reproductive morphology is plastic depending on age and condition, and between species with different breeding systems. The project constitutes an exciting opportunity to investigate the role of sexual conflict on the evolution of reproductive structures in the context of social and behavioral complexity in vertebrates. Broader impacts of the research will be international, national, local, and personal. The first research publication related to this project was widely disseminated in popular newspapers, magazines, television programs, websites and blogs. The project will incorporate high school students from under-represented minorities through the Yale University EVOLUTIONISTS program, which serves students in New Haven, CT. The experimental manipulations suggested in this project will be carried out at a non-profit conservation organization (LRWC.net) whose mission is to conserve waterfowl through education, research and outreach and this project will help to further their goals.