Verzijden Machteld N, Abbott Jessica K, von Philipsborn Anne C, Loeschcke Volker
Aarhus Institute for Advanced Studies, Aarhus University, Denmark.
Department of Bioscience, Section for Genetics, Ecology and Evolution, Aarhus University, Denmark.
Curr Zool. 2015 Dec;61(6):1036-1042. doi: 10.1093/czoolo/61.6.1036. Epub 2015 Dec 1.
Although males are generally less discriminating than females when it comes to choosing a mate, they still benefit from distinguishing between mates that are receptive to courtship and those that are not, in order to avoid wasting time and energy. It is known that males of are able to learn to associate olfactory and gustatory cues with female receptivity, but the role of more arbitrary, visual cues in mate choice learning has been overlooked to date in this species. We therefore carried out a series of experiments to determine: 1) whether males had a baseline preference for female eye color (red versus brown), 2) if males could learn to associate an eye color cue with female receptivity, and 3) whether this association disappeared when the males were unable to use this visual cue in the dark. We found that naïve males had no baseline preference for females of either eye color, but that males which were trained with sexually receptive females of a given eye color showed a preference for that color during a standard binary choice experiment. The learned cue was indeed likely to be truly visual, since the preference disappeared when the binary choice phase of the experiment was carried out in darkness.This is, to our knowledge 1) the first evidence that male can use more arbitrary cues and 2) the first evidence that males use visual cues during mate choice learning. Our findings suggest that that has untapped potential as a model system for mate choice learning.
虽然在选择配偶方面，雄性通常不如雌性挑剔，但为了避免浪费时间和精力，它们仍能从区分愿意接受求爱的配偶和不愿意接受的配偶中受益。已知某物种的雄性能够学会将嗅觉和味觉线索与雌性的接受性联系起来，但迄今为止，在这个物种中，更为随意的视觉线索在配偶选择学习中的作用一直被忽视。因此，我们进行了一系列实验来确定：1）雄性是否对雌性眼睛颜色（红色与棕色）有基线偏好；2）雄性是否能学会将眼睛颜色线索与雌性的接受性联系起来；3）当雄性在黑暗中无法使用这种视觉线索时，这种联系是否会消失。我们发现，未接触过的雄性对两种眼睛颜色的雌性都没有基线偏好，但在标准的二元选择实验中，用具有特定眼睛颜色且处于性接受期的雌性对雄性进行训练后，雄性会对该颜色表现出偏好。这种习得的线索确实很可能是真正的视觉线索，因为当实验的二元选择阶段在黑暗中进行时，这种偏好就消失了。据我们所知，这是1）雄性能够使用更为随意的线索的首个证据，以及2）雄性在配偶选择学习过程中使用视觉线索的首个证据。我们的研究结果表明，该物种作为配偶选择学习的模型系统具有尚未开发的潜力。
