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

论文研究：交配前经历影响蝴蝶 Bicyclus annana 的雌性交配偏好

• 批准号: 1110382
• 负责人: Paul Turner
• 金额: $ 1.5万
• 依托单位: Yale University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-09-15 至 2013-08-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1110382&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: DISSERTATION; RESEARCH; Pre; mating; experience

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.

女性如何选择伴侣？社交互动会改变先天的偏好吗？了解基因和社会环境如何相互作用以产生交配模式对于理解动物形态中壮观的多样性如何发展并得到维持至关重要。这项提出的工作旨在确定社交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，通过确定是否可以通过在最多样化的动物中的嗅觉信号来学习和介导伴侣对物理外观的偏好：蝴蝶：蝴蝶。确定女性可以学会喜欢特定的男性身体外观，将对男性蝴蝶的化学信号进行修改为1）确定女性对男性气味的先天偏好是否有助于女性学习偏好的身体外观，2）确定女性是否可以学习对特定男性气味的偏好。还将观察到女伴侣选择试验期间的男性互动，以确定男性竞争如何介导女性偏好。这将是第一个研究1）女性经验对任何动物中男性外观和气味相对重要性的作用； 2）男性活动和男性外观在非魔力脑中的组合作用，阐明了社交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演变。这项研究将培训本科研究人员，并将用于通过在培训阶段和社交互动过程中参与非科学专业的研究，从而在研究和社交互动过程中吸引研究生的研究生群体繁殖。该项目的调查结果将以读者友好的多媒体网页的形式显示在公共网站上，上面关于自行车的生物学，高中生，大型公众和科学界都可以访问。