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Effects of female preference intensity on the permissiveness of sexual trait polymorphisms

Version 2 2024-06-03, 13:19
Version 1 2018-04-18, 16:56
journal contribution
posted on 2024-06-03, 13:19 authored by A Ponkshe, John EndlerJohn Endler
Recent developments in sexual selection theory suggest that on their own, mate preferences can promote the maintenance of sexual trait diversity. However, how mate preferences constrain the permissiveness of sexual trait diversity in different environmental regimes remains an open question. Here, we examine how a range of mate choice parameters affect the permissiveness of sexual trait polymorphism under several selection regimes. We use the null model of sexual selection and show that environments with strong assortative mating significantly increase the permissiveness of sexual trait polymorphism. We show that for a given change in mate choice parameters, the permissiveness of polymorphism changes more in environments with strong natural selection on sexual traits than in environments with weak selection. Sets of nearly stable polymorphic populations with weak assortative mating are more likely to show accidental divergence in sexual traits than sets of populations with strong assortative mating. The permissiveness of sexual trait polymorphism critically depends upon particular combinations of natural selection and mate choice parameters.

History

Journal

Ecology and evolution

Volume

8

Pagination

4518-4524

Location

Chichester, Eng.

ISSN

2045-7758

eISSN

2045-7758

Language

eng

Publication classification

C Journal article, C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2018, The Authors

Issue

9

Publisher

Wiley Open Access