Sexual selection in genetic colourpolymorphic spe

Authors: Alexandre Roulin Pierre Bize

Publish Date: 2006/07/19

Volume: 25, Issue: 2, Pages: 99-105

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Abstract

Sexual selection theory has primarily focussed on the role of mating preferences for the best individuals in the evolution of conditiondependent ornaments traits that signal absolute quality Because the most suitable mate for one individual is not always the best for others however we argue that nondirectional mate choice can promote the evolution of alternative morphs that are not conditiondependent in their expression ie genetic polymorphism We list the different matechoice rules ie all individuals have the same preference preference depends on the chooser’s morph individuals mate preferentially with conspecifics displaying an uncommon or the most frequent morph and review experimental studies that investigated mate choice in natural populations of colourpolymorphic animals Our review emphasises that although the experimental data support the idea that sexual selection plays an important role in the evolution of genetic colour polymorphism in many different ways little is known about the adaptive value of each matechoice strategy and about their implication in the evolutionary stability of colour polymorphism One way of solving this problem is to determine the adaptive function of colour morphs a worthwhile objective because better understanding of matechoice rules in polymorphic species should provide important insights into sexualselection processes and in turn into the maintenance of genetic variation

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