Hybrid female mate choice as a species isolating mechanism: environment matters.

ABSTRACT: A fundamental goal of biology is to understand how new species arise and are maintained. Female mate choice is potentially critical to the speciation process: mate choice can prevent hybridization and thereby generate reproductive isolation between potentially interbreeding groups. Yet, in systems where hybridization occurs, mate choice by hybrid females might also play a key role in reproductive isolation by affecting hybrid fitness and contributing to patterns of gene flow between species. We evaluated whether hybrid mate choice behaviour could serve as such an isolating mechanism using spadefoot toad hybrids of Spea multiplicata and Spea bombifrons. We assessed the mate preferences of female hybrid spadefoot toads for sterile hybrid males vs. pure-species males in two alternative habita

SUBMITTER: Schmidt EM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4821768 | biostudies-literature | 2016 Apr

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature