The role of mating systems in plasticity & divergence across variable environments

进化生物学的一个主要目标是了解影响新性状发展和种群和物种分化的因素——生物多样性的产生。与交配成功相关的特征往往是个体成功的关键，因此也是适应性进化的整体模式的关键。但是，当影响个体交配成功的因素在空间和时间上发生变化时，进化过程是如何对这些因素作出反应的，人们还没有很好地理解。不同的物种可能对地理或季节变化的环境或社会条件表现出不同的反应，这取决于它们的交配生态。因此，理解环境变化和行为生态学之间的这种相互作用可能是解释物种分布、分化和入侵潜力差异的关键。

A major goal of evolutionary biology is to understand the factors that influence the development of novel traits and the divergence of populations and species - the generation of biodiversity. Traits related to mating success are often key to the success of individuals and therefore to overall patterns of adaptive evolution. But it is not well understood how evolutionary processes respond to factors that influence individual mating success when these factors vary in space and time. Different species may show distinct responses to geographic or seasonal variation in environmental or social conditions, depending on their mating ecology. Understanding such interactions between environmental variation and behavioural ecology may therefore be key to explaining differences in species distributions, divergence and invasive potential.