Decoupling of sexual signals and their underlying morphology facilitates rapid phenotypic diversification.

ABSTRACT: How novel phenotypes evolve is challenging to imagine because traits are often underlain by numerous integrated phenotypic components, and changes to any one form can disrupt the function of the entire module. Yet novel phenotypes do emerge, and research on adaptive phenotypic evolution suggests that complex traits can diverge while either maintaining existing form-function relationships or through innovations that alter form-function relationships. How these alternate routes contribute to sexual signal evolution is poorly understood, despite the role of sexual signals in generating biodiversity. In Hawaiian populations of the Pacific field cricket, male song attracts both female crickets and a deadly acoustically orienting parasitoid fly. In response to this conflict between natural and s

SUBMITTER: Gallagher JH 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9783451 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature