Journal
AMERICAN NATURALIST
Volume 175, Issue 4, Pages 401-414Publisher
UNIV CHICAGO PRESS
DOI: 10.1086/650719
Keywords
sexual selection; sexual dimorphism; phenotypic selection; fluctuating selection; sex ratio
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Funding
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (Canada)
- Premier's Research Excellence Awards (Ontario)
- University of Toronto
- W. John D. Eberlie Research Travel Award (Toronto Entomologists Association)
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A widely held view is that the strength and form of natural selection varies in time and space in response to varying ecological forces; however, adequate quantitative evaluations of this are relatively scarce. In this study, we measured the strength and form of sexual selection acting on a suite of male morphological traits in a wild ambush bug (Phymata americana) population at 10 sampling dates over 2 years. We tested the prediction that the strength and direction of sexual selection would be associated with one or more important ecological variables. We found that patterns of multivariate selection varied considerably over time, and even within a season. Yet, for this population, a sexually dimorphic color pattern trait was consistently a target of directional selection. The strength of sexual selection on this trait was related to both sex ratio and density, which is consistent with the idea that ecological factors can play an important role in generating patterns of sexual selection. We also demonstrate that the median strength of linear selection obtained from replicated cross-sectional methods was qualitatively similar to the estimates obtained from longitudinal methods, providing multiple lines of evidence that the evolution of sexual color dimorphism in this species is attributable to sexual selection.
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