Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Behavior, University of Minnesota, Saint Paul, MN, USA.
Graduate Program in Neuroscience, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA.
Sci Adv. 2020 May 15;6(20):eaax3957. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aax3957. eCollection 2020 May.
Like political stump speeches and product advertisements, animal signals are highly repetitive and function to persuade receivers to adopt behaviors benefiting the signaler. And like potential constituents and consumers, receivers assess signals to inform their behavioral decisions. However, inconsistency in sexual signals is widespread and potentially injects uncertainty into mating decisions. Here, we show that females fail to make optimal mating decisions based on assessments of signal quality due to inconsistency in signal production. Natural levels of inconsistency markedly reduced female preference expression for a nonarbitrary signal of male quality. Inconsistency reshaped preferences even more profoundly than the better-known impediment of ambient noise. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of how inconsistent messaging degrades optimal decision-making in animals, with implications for understanding signal evolution.
与政治竞选演讲和产品广告一样，动物信号高度重复，其功能是说服接收者采取有利于信号发送者的行为。与潜在的选民和消费者一样，接收者评估信号以告知他们的行为决策。然而，性信号的不一致性很普遍，这可能会给交配决策带来不确定性。在这里，我们表明，由于信号产生的不一致性，女性无法根据对信号质量的评估做出最佳的交配决策。自然水平的不一致性明显降低了女性对男性质量的非任意信号的偏好表达。与更著名的环境噪声障碍相比，不一致性甚至更深刻地重塑了偏好。据我们所知，这是首次证明不一致的信息如何降低动物的最佳决策能力，这对理解信号进化具有重要意义。
