Speciation and social plasticity: signal-preference phenotypes in social and genetic hybrids

该项目研究社会互动如何产生动物行为的变异，可能导致物种形成。除了新突变导致新特征的常见模式外，最近的研究表明，社会互动也可能使现有的遗传变异更广泛地暴露于选择，促进分化和物种形成。自然动物种群是否以及如何适应新环境的影响对社会具有广泛的相关性和实用性，这项工作有助于阐明适应新环境的条件可能比目前预期的更快。该项目整合了研究，指导，教学和社区外展，以研究与植物传播的振动信号交流的食草昆虫，以及这些昆虫密切相关的物种之间的行为接触如何诱导其交配信号和交配偏好的变化。该项目涉及高级和初级研究人员之间的跨大西洋合作;研究人员的资源开发（广泛免费提供新的软件工具）;为博士毕业生提供软件开发方面的替代职业培训试点方案;为家庭提供社区服务;并利用东道大学作为城市接入大学的地位，扩大学生的参与，当种群在生态和生殖特征上的差异是由单个位点的变化完成的时候，生物学家可以最好地概念化物种形成。但物种形成往往涉及复杂的多基因性状套件的分歧，目前还不清楚如何建立和维持连锁不平衡在这些情况下。这个项目将测试假设，社会可塑性可以导致多基因性状，如交配信号和配偶偏好，共同分歧，如果他们是由一个单一的基因座控制。这可以防止在物种形成早期不同种群之间的基因流动，并有助于建立连锁不平衡。这将把最简单的已知物种形成方案的效率扩展到涉及多基因性状分歧的情况。该项目结合了经验和理论方法。该建议的经验部分将使用Enchenopa binotata物种复合体的树跳。这组食草昆虫提供了信号偏好共趋异的案例研究，提供了不寻常的决议，在信号和偏好的变化的原因和后果的分析。实验将对比交配信号和交配偏好的表型变化，由于在模仿密切相关的物种之间的第一次接触的条件下发展，由于遗传杂交。支持这一假设需要的信号和偏好共同分歧，由于社会可塑性后，新生物种之间的第一次接触。该项目还将评估社会可塑性反应的地理差异，以测试信号偏好可塑性强化的竞争假设。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并被认为值得通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

This project investigates how social interactions produce variants in animal behavior, potentially leading to speciation. Besides the familiar pattern where new mutations lead to new traits, recent work indicates that social interactions may also expose existing genetic variation to selection much more broadly, facilitating divergence and speciation. The implications for whether and how natural animal populations adapt to new environments are of broad relevance and utility to society, and this work helps to elucidate the conditions under which adaptation to novel environments may be faster than currently anticipated. The project integrates research, mentorship, teaching, and community outreach to study plant-feeding insects that communicate with plant-borne vibrational signals, and the ways in which behavioral encounters between closely related species of these insects induce variation in their mating signals and mate preferences. The project involves a trans-Atlantic collaboration between senior and junior researchers; resource-development for researchers (making new software tools broadly and freely available); a pilot program for alternative-career training track in software development for PhD graduates; community outreach for families; and leveraging the host university's position as an urban-access university to broaden the participation of under-represented groups in science.Biologists can best conceptualize speciation when population divergence in ecological and reproductive traits is accomplished by changes in a single locus. But speciation often involves divergence in complex suites of polygenic traits, and it is not clear how linkage disequilibrium is established and sustained in these cases. This project will test the hypothesis that social plasticity can cause polygenic traits such as mating signals and mate preferences to co-diverge as if they were controlled by a single locus. This could prevent gene flow between diverging populations early in speciation and help build up linkage disequilibrium. This would extend the efficiency of the simplest known speciation scenario to cases involving divergence in polygenic traits. The project integrates both empirical and theoretical approaches. The empirical component of the proposal will use the Enchenopa binotata species complex of treehoppers. This group of plant-feeding insects offer a case study of signal-preference co-divergence that provides unusual resolution in the analysis of the causes and consequences of variation in signals and preferences. Experiments will contrast phenotypic variation in mating signals and mate preferences due to developing in conditions mimicking first contact between closely related species with that due to genetic hybridization. Support for the hypothesis requires that signals and preferences co-diverge due to social plasticity upon first contact between nascent species. The project will also assess geographic variation in the social plastic response to test the competing hypothesis of reinforcement on signal-preference plasticity. Theoretical work will generalize the empirical tests of the hypotheses.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.