The socio-sexual environment and social group choice by males

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Within populations, individual animals (including humans) differ to varying degrees in their behaviour and reproductive success. Such variation is necessary for the action of selection and thus evolution. Despite recent advances, much work remains to elucidate the mechanisms generating and maintaining biological trait variation, and the consequences of the latter for the processes of selection and evolution. Towards meeting this challenge, my research programme explores how and to what extent social associations among individual animals structures their societies and, in turn, how the social environment influences their behaviour. Socially-mediated behavioural decisions can affect social and sexual selection and evolutionary dynamics within populations.******The proposed research will investigate whether and how males select their social environment and the roles that ecological (e.g. predation risk) and demographic factors (e.g. group size and sex ratio) may play in such social behavioural decisions. How the social environment shapes the evolution of social behaviour is currently of considerable interest in the fields of evolutionary and behavioural ecology. We will use a small tropical fish, the Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata), as a model study system to: (i) characterize the nature of social group formation (fusion) and break-up (fission) within guppy societies in different natural environments in Trinidad that vary in predation risk and demographics, (ii) test for social partner choice and non-random social associations based on sexual attractiveness among males, and (iii) investigate whether social group choice in males is driven by mating opportunity or avoidance of predation, or an interaction between both. The guppy is an ideal species for the proposed research because it is a highly social species that lives in fission-fusion societies comprised of highly dynamic, mixed-sex groups of individuals, it exhibits a promiscuous mating system and mutual mate choice, and males are more mobile than females, moving frequently between groups in search of mates, among other reasons. Such fission-fusion societies are highly suitable systems for examining ecological and demographic correlates of sociality because they respond rapidly to changing conditions.******The proposed research will advance our understanding of how and to what extent social associations among males, and their choice of social groups, are mediated by their socio-sexual environment. This work is important because of its implications for sexual selection and social evolution, and more broadly for evolution of cooperation, social networks, and the social transmission of information and diseases within populations. It will train students in research methodology and prepare them for professional careers in education, science research and policy, environmental science, and health sciences, for example.*****