Female northern grass lizards judge mates by body shape to reinforce local adaptation.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Identifying the factors that contribute to divergence among populations in mate preferences is important for understanding of the manner in which premating reproductive isolation might arise and how this isolation may in turn contribute to the evolutionary process of population divergence. Here, we offered female northern grass lizards (Takydromus septentrionalis) a choice of males between their own population and another four populations to test whether the preferences that females display in the mating trials correlate with phenotypic adaptation to local environments, or to the neutral genetic distance measured by divergence of mitochondrial DNA sequence loci.

Results

Females showed a strong preference for native over foreign males. Females that mated wit

SUBMITTER: Guo K 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7409496 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature