Learning to speciate: The biased learning of mate preferences promotes adaptive radiation.

ABSTRACT: Bursts of rapid repeated speciation called adaptive radiations have generated much of Earth's biodiversity and fascinated biologists since Darwin, but we still do not know why some lineages radiate and others do not. Understanding what causes assortative mating to evolve rapidly and repeatedly in the same lineage is key to understanding adaptive radiation. Many species that have undergone adaptive radiations exhibit mate preference learning, where individuals acquire mate preferences by observing the phenotypes of other members of their populations. Mate preference learning can be biased if individuals also learn phenotypes to avoid in mates, and shift their preferences away from these avoided phenotypes. We used individual-based computational simulations to study whether biased and unbias

SUBMITTER: Gilman RT 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5057300 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature