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

女性如何选择伴侣？社会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，对于了解动物形态的壮观多样性如何进化和维持非常重要。这项拟议的工作旨在确定是否社会互动和视觉和嗅觉沟通与动物形态多样性的维护，通过确定是否可以学习和介导的嗅觉信号的存在下，在一个最多样化的动物群：蝴蝶的配偶偏好的外观。在确定雌性可以学习喜欢特定的雄性外表之后，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学习对外表的偏好，以及2）确定雌性是否可以学习对特定雄性气味的偏好。在女性择偶试验期间，也将观察到男性与男性的相互作用，以确定男性与男性的竞争如何介导女性的偏好。这将是第一个研究：1）在任何动物中，交配前雌性经验对雄性外观和气味的相对重要性的作用;以及2）非脊椎动物中雄性活动和雄性外观的组合作用，阐明社会互动和多种信号如何影响交配模式并推动多种动物形式的进化。这项研究将培养一名本科研究人员，并将用于通过本科生宿舍的研究生附属项目，在指导会议和社会交往期间让非理科专业的学生参与科学思维过程。这一项目的研究结果将以方便读者的多媒体网页形式，在一个关于Bicyclus anynana生物学的公共网站上公布，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.