DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Pre-mating experience influences female mate preference in the butterfly Bicyclus anynana

雌性如何选择配偶？社交互动会改变先天偏好吗？了解基因和社会环境如何相互作用以产生交配模式，对于了解动物形态中壮观的多样性是如何进化和维持的非常重要。这项拟议的工作旨在确定社会互动以及视觉和嗅觉交流是否与维持动物形态多样性有关，方法是确定配偶对外表的偏好是否可以通过蝴蝶这一最多样化的动物群体中嗅觉信号的存在来学习和调节。在确定雌性蝴蝶可以学习喜欢特定的雄性外表后，雄性蝴蝶的化学信号将被修改为1)确定雌性对雄性气味的先天偏好是否有助于雌性对外表的学习偏好，以及2)决定雌性是否可以学习对特定雄性气味的偏好。还将观察女性择偶试验中的男性与男性之间的相互作用，以确定男性与男性之间的竞争如何调节女性的偏好。这将是第一个研究：1)交配前雌性经历对雄性外表和气味在任何动物中的相对重要性的作用；2)雄性活动和雄性外表在非脊椎动物中的组合作用，阐明社会互动和多种信号如何影响交配模式，并推动不同动物形态的进化。这项研究将培养一名本科生研究人员，并将用于在导师会议期间让非理科专业的学生参与科学思维过程，以及通过本科生宿舍的研究生附属项目进行社会互动。该项目的成果将以便于读者阅读的多媒体网页的形式，在一个关于双子藻生物学的公共网站上展示，供高中生、广大公众和科学界使用。

How do females pick a mate? Do social interactions modify innate preferences? Understanding how genes and social environment interact to produce mating patterns is important for understanding how the spectacular diversity in animal morphology evolves and is maintained. This proposed work aims to determine whether social interactions and visual and olfactory communication are associated with the maintenance of animal morphological diversity by determining whether mate preferences for physical appearances can be learned and mediated by the presence of olfactory signals in one of the most diverse groups of animals: butterflies. Having determined that females can learn to like specific male physical appearances, the chemical signals of male butterflies will be modified to 1) determine whether female innate preferences for male odors facilitate female learning preferences for physical appearance, and 2) determine whether females can learn preferences for specific male odors. Male-male interactions during female mate choice trials will also be observed to determine how male-male competition mediates female preference. This will be the first study examining 1) the role of pre-mating female experience on the relative importance of male appearance and odor in any animal; and 2) the combinatorial role of male activity and male appearance in non-vertebrates, illuminating how social interactions and multiple signals influence mating patterns and drive the evolution of diverse animal forms.This research will train an undergraduate researcher, and will be used to engage non-science majors in scientific thought processes during mentoring sessions and social interactions via the graduate affiliate program at an undergraduate dorm. Findings from this project will be displayed on a public website on the biology of Bicyclus anynana, in the form of reader-friendly multi-media web-pages accessible to high-school students, the public at large and the scientific community.