University of Liverpool, Department of Evolution, Ecology and Behaviour, Biosciences Building, Crown Street, Liverpool, L69 7ZB, UK.
Ecol Lett. 2011 Sep;14(9):905-13. doi: 10.1111/j.1461-0248.2011.01655.x. Epub 2011 Jul 12.
Understanding, and therefore measuring, factors that determine fitness is a central problem in evolutionary biology. We studied a natural population of Coenagrion puella (Odonata: Zygoptera) over two entire breeding seasons, with over a thousand individuals uniquely marked and genotyped, and all mating events at the rendezvous site recorded. Using a parentage analysis, fitness of individuals in the first generation was quantified as the numbers of offspring that survived to maturity. Although mating behaviour can be predicted by environmental and demographical variables, the numbers of mature offspring produced (fitness) cannot, and crucially, are poorly correlated with behavioural observations of mating. While fitness of both sexes was positively related to mating behaviour and to female's ectoparasite burden, these behavioural observations explained little more variance in offspring production than environmental and demographical variables. Thus, we demonstrate that behavioural measures of reproductive success are not necessarily reliable estimates of fitness in natural populations.
理解并因此衡量决定适合度的因素是进化生物学中的一个核心问题。我们在两个完整的繁殖季节里研究了一个 Coenagrion puella（蜻蜓目：束翅亚目）的自然种群，对超过一千个个体进行了独特的标记和基因分型，并记录了所有在约会地点发生的交配事件。通过亲子分析，第一代个体的适合度被量化为成熟后代的数量。尽管交配行为可以通过环境和人口变量来预测，但成熟后代的数量（适合度）却不能，而且至关重要的是，与交配行为的观察结果相关性很差。尽管两性的适合度都与交配行为和雌性的外寄生虫负担呈正相关，但这些行为观察结果对后代繁殖的解释程度仅略高于环境和人口变量。因此，我们证明了生殖成功的行为衡量标准不一定是自然种群中适合度的可靠估计。
