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Avoidance of mating mistakes in female wood crickets ( Gryllus vernalis )

Avoidance of mating mistakes in female wood crickets ( Gryllus vernalis ). Amanda Bockhorst 2/23/2005. Background. Mating barriers/isolating mechanisms Pre-zygotic barriers: before mating, e.g. male sexual characteristics, female preferences

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Avoidance of mating mistakes in female wood crickets ( Gryllus vernalis )

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  1. Avoidance of mating mistakes in female wood crickets (Gryllus vernalis) Amanda Bockhorst 2/23/2005

  2. Background • Mating barriers/isolating mechanisms • Pre-zygotic barriers: before mating, e.g. male sexual characteristics, female preferences • Post-zygotic barriers: after mating, e.g. genetic incompatibility, reduced hybrid fitness

  3. Mating behaviors • Males attract females with calling song • When female approaches male they touch antenna • Male produces courtship song • If male is acceptable female mounts

  4. Mating process

  5. Character displacement • If species compete for resources, evolutionary divergence of resource use occurs where species come into geographic contact (Day and Young 2004) • Sexual signals more distinct in sympatry than allopatry

  6. Character displacement explored in males more than females • Preference for male signals may diverge in sympatry

  7. Day and Young 2004

  8. Focal species G. vernalis male G. fultoni male Images and sounds obtained from T.J. Walker’s website http://buzz.ifas.ufl.edu

  9. Cricket Distributions

  10. Calling song chirp period pulse period Chirp duration pulse 50ms

  11. Call Characters • Both species have similar call characteristics in allopatry • G. fultoni has increased pulse rate and chirp rate in sympatry with G. vernalis versusallopatry

  12. Character displacement

  13. Character displacement

  14. No hybrid offspring have successfully hatched in the lab, suggesting the existence of post-zygotic isolating mechanism • Females have only one clutch of eggs/year and their fitness is zero if they miss-mate.

  15. Questions • Are female G. vernalis able to avoid mating mistakes by using differences in male calling song? • Are allopatric females more likely than sympatric females to make mating mistakes when presented with heterospecific call characteristics?

  16. Proposed Experiment • Females from four populations: two allopatric, two sympatric • Tested on a Kramer walking compensator using synthetic calling songs

  17. Testing chamber

  18. Stimuli

  19. Stimuli

  20. Phonotaxis score • Custom software records walking speed, vector angle, and vector length • Variables imported into Excel and a phonotaxis score (-1 to 1) is computed • The average female phonotaxis score for each population will be computed

  21. Expected Results High vern Allo fult Sym fult High fult Vern

  22. ANOVA • Additionally a three factor nested ANOVA will be performed • Three factors: two sets of stimuli, subject • Population nested within location (allopatric or sympatric)

  23. Pilot Data

  24. Future Directions • Testing female preferences for short range mating behaviors: antennal contact and courtship song

  25. My Committee Carl Gerhardt Johannes Schul Bruce Barrett Ray Semlitch Gerhardt lab Yikweon Jang Josh and Oli Acknowledgements

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