Marine Biology Research Division, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, CA, United States.
Evolution. 2023 Oct 3;77(10):2234-2245. doi: 10.1093/evolut/qpad135.
Complexity in prezygotic mating behavior can contribute to the emergence of sexual incompatibility and reproductive isolation. In this study, we performed behavioral tests with two tidepool copepod species of the genus Tigriopus to explore the possibility of precopulatory behavioral isolation. We found that interspecific mating attempts failed prior to genital contact, and that this failure occurred at different behavioral steps between reciprocal pairings. Our results suggest that prezygotic barriers may exist at multiple points of the behavioral process on both male and female sides, possibly due to interspecific differences in mate-recognition cues used at those "checkpoints." While many copepod species are known to show unique precopulatory mate-guarding behavior, the potential contribution of prezygotic behavioral factors to their isolation is not widely recognized. The pattern of sequential mate-guarding behaviors may have allowed the diversification of precopulatory communication and contributed to the evolutionary diversity of the Tigriopus copepods.
在配子前交配行为的复杂性可能有助于性不相容和生殖隔离的出现。在这项研究中，我们对两种潮间带桡足类属 Tigriopus 进行了行为测试，以探索交配前行为隔离的可能性。我们发现，种间交配尝试在生殖器接触之前就失败了，而且这种失败发生在相互配对的不同行为步骤中。我们的结果表明，在性行为过程中的多个点上，雌雄双方可能存在配子前障碍，这可能是由于在这些“检查点”使用的种间识别线索不同。虽然许多桡足类物种被认为具有独特的交配前守护行为，但配子前行为因素对其隔离的潜在贡献尚未得到广泛认可。顺序交配守护行为的模式可能允许交配前通讯的多样化，并促进了 Tigriopus 桡足类的进化多样性。
