Male-driven reproductive and agonistic character displacement in darters and its implications for speciation in allopatry.

ABSTRACT: Selection against hybridization can cause mating traits to diverge between species in sympatry via reproductive character displacement (RCD). Additionally, selection against interspecific fighting can cause aggressive traits to diverge between sympatric species via agonistic character displacement (ACD). By directly affecting conspecific recognition traits, RCD and ACD between species can also incidentally cause divergence in mating and fighting traits among populations within a species [termed cascade RCD (CRCD) and cascade ACD]. Here, we demonstrate patterns consistent with male-driven RCD and ACD in 2 groups of darters (orangethroat darter clade Ceasia and rainbow darter Etheostoma caeruleum). In both groups, males that occur in sympatry (between Ceasia and E. ca

SUBMITTER: Moran RL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5809036 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Feb

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature