Axes of multivariate sexual signal divergence among incipient species: Concordance with selection, genetic variation and phenotypic plasticity.

Abstract

Sexual signalling traits are often observed to diverge rapidly among populations, thereby playing a potentially key early role in the evolution of reproductive isolation. While often assumed to reflect divergent sexual selection among populations, patterns of sexual trait diversification might sometimes be biased along axes of standing additive genetic variation and covariation among trait components. Additionally, theory predicts that environmentally induced phenotypic variation might facilitate rapid trait evolution, suggesting that patterns of divergence between populations should mirror phenotypic plasticity within populations. Here, we evaluate the concordance between observed axes of multivariate sexual trait divergence and predicted divergence based on (1) interpopulation variation in sexual selection, (2) additive genetic variances and (3) temperature-related phenotypic plasticity in male courtship song among geographically isolated populations of the Hawaiian swordtail cricket, Laupala cerasina, which exhibit sexual isolation due acoustic signalling traits. The major axis of multivariate divergence, dmax , accounted for 76% of variation among population male song trait means and was moderately correlated with interpopulation differences in directional sexual selection based on female preferences. However, the majority of additive genetic variance was largely oriented away from the direction of divergence, suggesting that standing genetic variation may not play a dominant role in the patterning of signal divergence. In contrast, the axis of phenotypic plasticity strongly mirrored patterns of interpopulation phenotypic divergence, which is consistent with a role for temperature-related plasticity in facilitating instead of inhibiting male song evolution and sexual isolation in these incipient species. We propose potential mechanisms by which sexual selection might interact with phenotypic plasticity to facilitate the rapid acoustic diversification observed in this species and clade.