DISSERTATION RESEARCH: Pre-mating experience influences female mate preference in the butterfly Bicyclus anynana

Yale University, New Haven CT

Investigators

Abstract

How do females pick a mate? Do social interactions modify innate preferences? Understanding how genes and social environment interact to produce mating patterns is important for understanding how the spectacular diversity in animal morphology evolves and is maintained. This proposed work aims to determine whether social interactions and visual and olfactory communication are associated with the maintenance of animal morphological diversity by determining whether mate preferences for physical appearances can be learned and mediated by the presence of olfactory signals in one of the most diverse groups of animals: butterflies. Having determined that females can learn to like specific male physical appearances, the chemical signals of male butterflies will be modified to 1) determine whether female innate preferences for male odors facilitate female learning preferences for physical appearance, and 2) determine whether females can learn preferences for specific male odors. Male-male interactions during female mate choice trials will also be observed to determine how male-male competition mediates female preference. This will be the first study examining 1) the role of pre-mating female experience on the relative importance of male appearance and odor in any animal; and 2) the combinatorial role of male activity and male appearance in non-vertebrates, illuminating how social interactions and multiple signals influence mating patterns and drive the evolution of diverse animal forms. This research will train an undergraduate researcher, and will be used to engage non-science majors in scientific thought processes during mentoring sessions and social interactions via the graduate affiliate program at an undergraduate dorm. Findings from this project will be displayed on a public website on the biology of Bicyclus anynana, in the form of reader-friendly multi-media web-pages accessible to high-school students, the public at large and the scientific community.