LTREB: Sexual selection over time: evolutionary dynamics and outcomes of intense male competition and female mate choice in a lek mating system

这个项目的目的是了解性选择的进化是如何发生的。它分析了个体产生后代以及产生多少后代的差异如何导致整个种群的行为或形态变化。在自然种群中，一些个体往往比其他个体更成功地产生后代。这在“列克”交配物种中尤其如此，雄性在一个地方向许多雌性展示，雌性在交配前拜访许多雄性。这种行为的典型例子发生在孔雀，天堂鸟和小型热带鸟类称为侏儒鸟。这个项目建立在对矛尾侏儒鸟行为的长期监测的基础上，以调查个体繁殖成功的模式。通过跟踪单个侏儒鸟的命运，并将个体行为和其他特征与遗传测量的生殖成功联系起来，研究人员将测量野生种群中自然选择和性选择的强度。这项工作的更广泛的影响，包括密集的独立研究的机会，本科生，国际和大学校园。一个合作主办了侏儒鸟展示活动的直播流，支持关于进化和行为的深入和准确的内容。该工作为研究生和研究生提供了培训机会，他们将参与数据收集和外展。该项目推进了进化和动物行为研究的三个关键领域。首先，它表征了性选择发生的可能性（以标准化生殖方差衡量）的时间变化。为了做到这一点，这项工作调查了这种变化的三个假设来源：繁殖同步性，气候变化，以及首选配偶的可用性变化。其次，它利用长期数据集的优势，将个体生命周期中发生的变化纳入性选择分析。这允许将发育过程与选择过程分开，以更准确地表征选择的靶。长期数据包括相同雄性在其繁殖期内的显示视频，这些将被分析以客观地测量显示性能随时间的变化。最后，这项研究直接量化了种群随时间的遗传变化。这些数据将用于评估进化变化的多个来源的相对贡献，包括生存力选择，基因流，漂移以及性选择。在这项研究中存档的样本为以后的基因组分析奠定了基础，以了解性选择的基因。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智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估来支持。

The purpose of this project is to understand how evolution by sexual selection occurs. It analyzes how differences in which individuals produce offspring and how many offspring they produce lead to population-wide changes in behavior or morphology. In natural populations, some individuals are often more successful than others at producing offspring. This is especially true in “lek” mating species, where males display to many females in one location, and females visit many males before mating. Iconic examples of such behavior occur in peacocks, birds-of-paradise, and small tropical birds called manakins. This project builds on long-term monitoring of behavior in the lance-tailed manakin to investigate patterns of individual reproductive success. By following the fate of individual manakins and linking individual behavior and other traits to genetically measured reproductive success, researchers will measure the strength of both natural and sexual selection in a wild population. Broader impacts of this work include intensive independent research opportunities for undergraduate students, internationally and on the university campus. A collaboration hosts a live stream of manakin display activity with supporting in-depth and accurate content about evolution and behavior. The work produces training opportunities for post-graduates and graduate students, who will take part in data collection and outreach.This project advances three key areas of research in evolution and animal behavior. First, it characterizes temporal variation in the potential for sexual selection to occur (measured as standardized reproductive variance). To do so, the work investigates three hypothesized sources of this variation: breeding synchrony, climactic variation, and variation in the availability of preferred mates. Second, it draws on strengths of the long-term dataset to incorporate changes that occur across individual lifespans into analyses of sexual selection. This allows for the separation of developmental from selective processes to more accurately characterize targets of selection. Long-term data include video of displays by the same males across their breeding tenure, and these will be analyzed to objectively measure changes in display performance over time. Finally, this study directly quantifies genetic changes in the population over time. These data will be used to assess the relative contribution of multiple sources of evolutionary change, including viability selection, gene flow, and drift as well as sexual selection. Samples archived during this study build potential for later genomic analysis to understand the genes underlying sexual selection.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.