School of Biosciences, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, Victoria 3010, Australia.
School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales 2000, Australia.
J Evol Biol. 2024 Nov 2;37(11):1345-1355. doi: 10.1093/jeb/voae118.
One of the most evident sources of phenotypic diversity within a population is colouration, as exemplified by colour polymorphism. This is relevant to a greater extent in animals with visually biased sensory systems. There is substantial evidence suggesting that different colour morphs can access a broader range of habitats or niches, leading to larger geographic range sizes. However, this hypothesis has been tested in few lineages, comprising species where colour is likely to be involved in sexual selection. Furthermore, some available evidence considers geographical variation as polymorphism, thus limiting our comprehension of how sympatric colour polymorphism can influence a species' geographic range. Through an extensive systematic literature review and a comparative analysis, we examined the relationship between colour polymorphism and range size or niche breadth in web-building spiders. We identified 140 colour polymorphic spider species, belonging mainly to the families Araneidae and Theridiidae. We found no evidence that colour polymorphic species differ significantly from non-polymorphic species in terms of range size and niche breadth, after accounting for phylogenetic relationships and other covariates. However, we did observe that colour polymorphic species were more likely to be found on islands compared to non-polymorphic species. Overall, our results indicate that the association between colour polymorphism and geographic range size may not exist among web-building spiders, or be as pronounced as in other lineages. This suggests that the strength of the association between colour polymorphism and ecological success might depend on the ecological role that colouration plays in each clade.
群体内表型多样性最明显的来源之一是颜色，例如颜色多态性。对于具有视觉偏向性感觉系统的动物来说，这一点更为重要。有大量证据表明，不同的颜色形态可以进入更广泛的栖息地或小生境，从而导致更大的地理范围。然而，这个假设在少数几个谱系中得到了验证，这些谱系中的物种颜色可能与性选择有关。此外，一些现有证据将地理变异视为多态性，从而限制了我们对同域颜色多态性如何影响物种地理范围的理解。通过广泛的系统文献综述和比较分析，我们研究了结网蜘蛛的颜色多态性与范围大小或生态位宽度之间的关系。我们确定了 140 种颜色多态性蜘蛛物种，主要属于 Araneidae 和 Theridiidae 科。我们发现，在考虑了系统发育关系和其他协变量后，颜色多态性物种在范围大小和生态位宽度方面与非多态性物种没有显著差异。然而，我们确实观察到颜色多态性物种在岛屿上比非多态性物种更常见。总体而言，我们的结果表明，颜色多态性与地理范围大小之间的关联在结网蜘蛛中可能并不存在，或者不像在其他谱系中那样明显。这表明，颜色多态性与生态成功之间的关联强度可能取决于颜色在每个进化枝中的生态作用。
