Male courtship preferences demonstrate discrimination against allopatric colour morphs in a cichlid fish.

ABSTRACT: Whether premating isolation is achieved by male-specific, female-specific or sex-independent assortative preferences often depends on the underlying evolutionary processes. Here we test mate preferences of males presented with females of different allopatric colour variants of the cichlid fish Tropheus sp., a Lake Tanganyika endemic with rich geographical colour pattern variation, in which the strength of sexual isolation varies between populations. We conducted two-way mate choice experiments to compare behaviour of males of a red-bodied morph (population Moliro) towards females from their own population with behaviour towards females from four allopatric populations at different stages of phylogenetic and phenotypic divergence. Males courted same-population females significantly more int

SUBMITTER: Zoppoth P 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3599476 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature