Abstract
Color polymorphic sexual signals are often associated with alternative reproductive behaviors within populations, and the number, frequency, or type of morphs present often vary among populations. When these differences lead to assortative mating by population, the study of such polymorphic taxa may shed light on speciation mechanisms. We studied two populations of a lizard with polymorphic throat color, an important sexual signal. Males in one population exhibit orange, yellow, or blue throats; whereas males in the other exhibit orange, yellow, or white throats. We assessed female behavior when choosing between allopatric and sympatric males. We asked whether females discriminated more when the allopatric male was of an unfamiliar morph than when the allopatric male was similar in coloration to the sympatric male. We found that female rejection of allopatric males relative to sympatric males was more pronounced when males in a pair were more different in throat color. Our findings may help illuminate how behavioral responses to color morph differences between populations with polymorphic sexual signals contribute to reproductive isolation.
Highlights
Discrete phenotypic polymorphisms in colorful sexual signals are associated with alternative reproductive tactics in a variety of taxa [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9], including several lizards [3,10,11]
Taxa in which color polymorphisms or alternative reproductive tactics are common may diversify at higher rates than taxa that do not exhibit these characteristics [12,13,14,15,16,17], a hypothesis supported by the observation that closely related species or divergent populations of the same species often differ in their sexual signals [18,19]
different color’’ (DC) sympatric male identity accounted for a variance component significantly different from zero, so that was the only random effect we retained in subsequent tests
Summary
Discrete phenotypic polymorphisms in colorful sexual signals are associated with alternative reproductive tactics in a variety of taxa [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9], including several lizards [3,10,11]. Taxa in which color polymorphisms or alternative reproductive tactics are common may diversify at higher rates than taxa that do not exhibit these characteristics [12,13,14,15,16,17], a hypothesis supported by the observation that closely related species or divergent populations of the same species often differ in their sexual signals [18,19]. Color morphs varied in the degree of postzygotic reproductive isolation they displayed in interpopulation crosses, indicating that which color morphs are present, and the frequencies at which they occur, may influence the degree of gene flow between color polymorphic populations [40]
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