RoL: When does learning facilitate speciation by sexual selection?

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The role of sexual selection in the process of speciation has been long debated, in part due to a lack of observations in nature for the mechanisms that have been proposed in theoretical models. This project will fill gaps in our understanding of speciation by identifying the conditions under which learning, a process common to the development of reproductive behaviors in many animal taxa, may facilitate speciation. The research in this project links experiments to understand how mating behaviors are formed with models that build on those findings to make predictions at the level of populations and diverging lineages. The subject of the behavioral experiments is the strawberry poison frog, a species that shows striking diversity in coloration and for which color-assortative behaviors are known to be shaped by learning. The theoretical models developed in each objective will broaden the project’s findings by asking how different types of mating traits and learning that are found in other animals affect the likelihood of speciation. The project’s objectives in education and outreach include training a diverse group of students, continuing involvement with citizen science programs and development of K-12 curricula aimed at teaching concepts in biology related to the research, including evolution, animal behavior, and the factors that impact biodiversity.The project’s first objective will integrate a rearing experiment and behavioral assays with population-genetic modeling to ask how learning from different tutors (and at different stages in development) affects the likelihood of behavioral reproductive isolation. The second objective will use a behavioral assay, coupled with theoretical modeling, to ask how variation in an animal’s perception of mating traits, and the genetic architecture that underlies those mating traits, interact to affect the likelihood of speciation. The project’s final objective will use a field study, coupled with a third theoretical model, to investigate how evolution of the strength of learned behavioral biases impacts the likelihood of speciation.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.