4.5 Article

The evolution of sex similarities in social signals: Climatic seasonality is associated with lower sexual dimorphism and greater elaboration of female and male signals in antbirds (Thamnophilidae)

Journal

EVOLUTION
Volume 76, Issue 12, Pages 2893-2915

Publisher

OXFORD UNIV PRESS
DOI: 10.1111/evo.14638

Keywords

Bird song; plumage coloration; sexual dichromatism; sexual selection; social selection

Funding

  1. Coordination for the Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES) [001]
  2. Fulbright Doctoral Dissertation Research Award
  3. Science Without Borders Doctoral Fellowship from Brazil's National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq) [201234/2014-9]
  4. National Science Foundation Award

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Selection on signals is affected by resource availability, which is regulated by climate. Harsher environments may lead to convergent development of signals in both sexes, increasing sexual dimorphism.
Selection on signals that mediate social competition varies with resource availability. Climate regulates resource availability, which may affect the strength of competition and selection on signals. Traditionally, this meant that more seasonal, colder, or dryer-overall harsher-environments should favor the elaboration of male signals under stronger male-male competition, increasing sexual dimorphism. However, females also use signals to compete; thus, harsher environments could strengthen competition and favor elaboration of signals in both sexes, decreasing sexual dimorphism. Alternatively, harsher environments could decrease sexual dimorphism due to scarcer resources to invest in signal elaboration in both sexes. We evaluated these contrasting hypotheses in antbirds, a family of Neotropical passerines that varies in female and male signals and occurs across diverse climatic regimes. We tested the association of sexual dimorphism of plumage coloration and songs with temperature, precipitation, and their seasonality. We found that greater seasonality is associated with lower sexual dimorphism in plumage coloration and greater elaboration of visual signals in both sexes, but not acoustic signals. Our results suggest that greater seasonality may be associated with convergent elaboration of female and male visual signals, highlighting the role of signals of both sexes in the evolution of sexual dimorphism.

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