Fargevieille Amélie, Grégoire Arnaud, Charmantier Anne, Del Rey Granado Maria, Doutrelant Claire
CEFE UMR5175 CNRS - Université de Montpellier Montpellier France.
Ecol Evol. 2017 Feb 26;7(7):2069-2078. doi: 10.1002/ece3.2822. eCollection 2017 Apr.
Assortative mating is a potential outcome of sexual selection, and estimating its level is important to better understand local adaptation and underlying trait evolution. However, assortative mating studies frequently base their conclusions on small numbers of individuals sampled over short periods of time and limited spatial scales even though spatiotemporal variation is common. Here, we characterized assortative mating patterns over 10 years in four populations of the blue tit (), a passerine bird. We focused on two plumage ornaments-the blue crown and the yellow breast patch. Based on data for 1,657 pairs of birds, we found large interannual variation: assortative mating varied from positive to negative. To determine whether there was nonetheless a general trend in the data, we ran a within-study meta-analysis. It revealed that assortative mating was moderately positive for both ornaments. It also showed that mating patterns differed among populations and especially between two neighboring populations that displayed phenotypic divergence. Our results therefore underscore that long-term studies are needed to draw broad conclusions about mating patterns in natural populations. They also call for studying the potential role of assortative mating in local adaptation and evolution of ornaments in both sexes.
选型交配是性选择的一个潜在结果，评估其程度对于更好地理解局部适应性和潜在性状进化很重要。然而，选型交配研究往往基于在短时间和有限空间尺度上采样的少量个体得出结论，尽管时空变化很常见。在这里，我们描述了10年间蓝山雀（一种雀形目鸟类）四个种群的选型交配模式。我们关注两种羽毛装饰——蓝色冠羽和黄色胸斑。基于1657对鸟类的数据，我们发现了很大的年际变化：选型交配从正向负向变化。为了确定数据中是否仍然存在总体趋势，我们进行了一项研究内的荟萃分析。结果显示，对于这两种装饰，选型交配呈中度正向。分析还表明，交配模式在不同种群之间存在差异，尤其是在表现出表型差异的两个相邻种群之间。因此，我们的结果强调，需要进行长期研究才能就自然种群的交配模式得出广泛结论。这些结果还呼吁研究选型交配在两性局部适应性和装饰进化中的潜在作用。
