Role of sexual imprinting in assortative mating and premating isolation in Darwin's finches.

ABSTRACT: Global biodiversity is being degraded at an unprecedented rate, so it is important to preserve the potential for future speciation. Providing for the future requires understanding speciation as a contemporary ecological process. Phylogenetically young adaptive radiations are a good choice for detailed study because diversification is ongoing. A key question is how incipient species become reproductively isolated from each other. Barriers to gene exchange have been investigated experimentally in the laboratory and in the field, but little information exists from the quantitative study of mating patterns in nature. Although the degree to which genetic variation underlying mate-preference learning is unknown, we provide evidence that two species of Darwin's finches imprint on morphological cu

SUBMITTER: Grant PR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6243256 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature