scholarly journals The evolution of female sex pheromones

2013 ◽  
Vol 59 (4) ◽  
pp. 569-578 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ally R. Harari ◽  
Hadass Steinitz
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Sex Pheromones ◽  
Species Recognition ◽  
Current Evidence ◽  
Social Selection ◽  
Breeding Sites ◽  
Female Sex ◽  
Breeding Resources

Abstract The role of female sex pheromones in natural selection, particularly as a means for species recognition to avoid the generation of hybrid offspring with low fitness, has been widely explored and is generally accepted by scholars. However, the significance of sex pheromones in shaping mate choice (sexual selection) and in competition over breeding resources (social selection) has been largely ignored. The effect of sexual selection on sex pheromones as a sexually dimorphic signaling trait has been discounted because the amount of pheromone released by females is typically minute, while the role of sex pheromones in competition over breeding resources (other than mates) has not yet been considered. As a result of natural selection, variation in sex pheromones among females is expected to be low, and males are not expected to choose their mates among phero-mone-releasing conspecific females. Sexual selection, on the other hand, should drive the increase in pheromone variance among females, and males are expected to choose females based on this variation. Moreover, social selection resulting from more general social interactions, for example competition among females for breeding sites and food, should also promote variance among female sex pheromones. Here, we review the current evidence for each of the three selection processes acting on sex pheromones of female moths as an advertising trait. We suggest that the three selection types are not mutually exclusive but rather act together to promote different fitness components in diverse ecological situations.

Adaptation

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lee Cronk ◽  
Beth L. Leech
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Levels Of Explanation ◽  
Different Levels ◽  
Culture And Language ◽  
Evolutionary Explanations

This chapter examines the concept of adaptation and how it is applied (and sometimes misapplied) to cooperation. It starts with George C. Williams's idea that adaptation is a “special and onerous concept that should be used only where it is really necessary,” which he articulated in Adaptation and Natural Selection. It then considers different levels of explanation that help clarify the notion of adaptation, fortuitous benefits and by-product mutualism in relation to adaptation, and the link between adaptation and natural, artificial, social, and sexual selection. It also explores how phylogeny constrains natural selection, the ways that adaptations solve specific problems found in specific environments, and how adaptation influences judgment. Finally, it analyzes the role of culture and language in adaptation and evolutionary explanations of morality.

scholarly journals Translating “natural selection” in Japanese: from “shizen tōta” to “shizen sentaku”, and back?

Bionomina ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 26-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Taizo KIJIMA ◽  
Thierry HOQUET
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
First Finding ◽  
Restriction Policy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Japanese Translation ◽  
Over Time

This paper focuses on terminological issues related to the translation of Darwin’s concept of “natural selection” in Japanese. We analyze the historical fate of the different phrases used as translations, from the first attempts in the late 1870s until recent times. Our first finding is that the first part of the Japanese translations never changed during the period considered: “natural” was constantly rendered by “shizen”. By contrast, the Japanese terms for “selection” have dramatically changed over time. We identify some major breaks in the history of Japanese translations for “natural selection”. From the end of the 1870s to the early 1880s, several translations were suggested in books and periodicals: “shizen kanbatsu”, “shizen tōta”, “tensen”. Katō Hiroyuki adopted “shizen tōta” in 1882 and he undeniably played an important role in spreading this phrase as the standard translation for “natural selection”. The most common Japanese translation of the Origin during the first half of the 20th century (by Oka Asajirō in 1905) also used “shizen tōta”. Adramatic shift occurred after WWII, from “tōta” to “sentaku”. While a linear interpretation could suggest a move from a “bad” translation to a better one, a closer analysis leads to more challenging insights. Especially we stress the role of the kanji restriction policy, which specified which kanji should be taught in schools and thus should be used in textbooks: “tōta” was not included in the list, which may have led to the good fortune of “sentaku” in the 1950–1960s. We think the hypothesis of the influence of Chinese translations is not a plausible one. As to conceptual differences between “shizen tōta” and “sentaku”, they remain unconvincing as both terms could be interpreted as a positive or negative process: there is no clear reason to prefer one term over the other from the strict point of view of their meanings or etymology. Then, turning to the way terms are used, we compare translations of natural selection with translations of artificial or sexual selection. First we turn to the field of thremmatology (breeders): there, “tōta” (sometimes spelled in hiragana instead of kanji) often bore the meaning of culling; since 1917, breeders often used “sentaku” as a translation for “selection”. However, quite surprisingly, breeders used two different terms for selection as a practice (“senbatsu”), and “selection” as in “natural selection” (“shizen sentaku”). Finally, we compare possible translations for “sexual selection” and “matechoice”: here again, there are some good reasons to favour “tōta” over “sentaku” to avoid lexical confusion.

scholarly journals Sexual selection and organs of sense: Darwin’s neglected insight

2019 ◽  
Vol 69 (1) ◽  
pp. 63-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark A. Elgar ◽  
Tamara L. Johnson ◽  
Matthew R.E. Symonds
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Sex Pheromones ◽  
High Quality

Abstract Studies of sexual selection that occurs prior to mating have focussed on either the role of armaments in intra-sexual selection, or extravagant signals for inter-sexual selection. However, Darwin suggested that sexual selection may also act on ‘organs of sense’, an idea that seems to have been largely overlooked. Here, we refine this idea in the context of the release of sex pheromones by female insects: females that lower the release of sex pheromones may benefit by mating with high-quality males, if their signalling investment results in sexual selection favouring males with larger or more sensitive antennae that are costly to develop and maintain.

Moth pheromone genetics and evolution

1993 ◽  
Vol 340 (1292) ◽  
pp. 167-177 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Mate Choice ◽  
Sex Pheromones ◽  
Species Recognition ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Mate Recognition ◽  
Genetic Dissection ◽  
Pheromone Communication ◽  
Mate Finding ◽  
Important Progress

Sex pheromone communication in moths is a well investigated case of mate-finding by chemical signals, but the evolutionary causes of the great complexity and diversity of these signals are still not generally agreed on. In the present paper, I argue that there is no reason to dismiss species recognition as a possible cause of evolutionary change in moth sex pheromones. Admittedly, selection for species recognition cannot explain all of the diversity in sex pheromones and the data supporting this contention are weak, but the alternative causes suggested, invoking mate choice between conspecifics as the mechanism of sexual selection, has so far no empirical support. Finding and analysing genes responsible for m ate choice is important to corroborate any theory of sexual selection and speciation. In this respect genetic dissection of moth pheromone communication has provided important progress. Mendelian genes controlling differences in m ate choice and in the production of mate recognition signals have been found. Polymorphic pheromone systems give the population biologists unique possibilities to study mate choice and selection at the genotype level in nature.

scholarly journals Evolutionary antagonisms and the progress of three categories of traits

BJHS Themes ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-22
Author(s):  
Nasser Zakariya
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Intellectual Development ◽  
Thomas Henry Huxley ◽  
Alfred Russel Wallace ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Descent Of Man ◽  
Ethical Systems

Abstract Darwin in The Descent of Man deliberates over the question of progress in relation to three categories of traits – aesthetic, moral and intellectual – attending to their interplay. The later formulations of Thomas Henry Huxley and Alfred Russel Wallace shift and reframe the terms for weighing together progress and the relationship across these traits, downplaying the role of aesthetic assessments. Huxley and Wallace invoke ‘antagonisms’ countering, respectively, ‘ethical progress’ and ‘cosmic process’, ‘humanity – the essentially human emotion’ and ‘physical and even intellectual race-improvement’. Thereafter, evolutionary antagonisms reappear – whether to endorse, dismiss or overcome them – and they remain relevant in evolutionary arguments, whether made explicit or left implicit. Following a thread of ongoing appeals to this interplay of traits and corresponding antagonisms invoking Huxley's 1893 lecture ‘Evolution and ethics’, implicit differences appear in the treatment of aesthetic, moral and intellectual development. These treatments maintain the progress that their own ethical systems represented, even while granting moral variation and conceding independent/alternative notions of the beautiful. They generally took as granted the uniformity of intellectual judgements, where evolutionary progress was both ethical and intellectual/scientific, even when speculating on the development of different types of mind. As characteristic of future-oriented visions of progress by the first decades of the twentieth century, sexual selection was subsumed under natural selection.

scholarly journals Local adaptation and sexual selection drive intra-island diversification in a songbird lineage: differential divergence in autosomes and sex chromosomes

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yann XC Bourgeois ◽  
Joris AM Bertrand ◽  
Boris Delahaie ◽  
Hélène Holota ◽  
Christophe Thébaud ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Natural Selection ◽  
Reproductive Isolation ◽  
Local Adaptation ◽  
Sex Chromosomes ◽  
Genomic Variation ◽  
Color Variation ◽  
Mating Signals ◽  
Genome Wide

AbstractRecently diverged taxa showing marked phenotypic and ecological diversity are optimal systems to test the relative importance of two major evolutionary mechanisms, adaptation to local ecological conditions by natural selection, or mechanisms of reproductive isolation such as assortative mating mediated by sexually selected mating signals or post-zygotic incompatibilities. Whereas local adaptation is expected to affect many loci throughout the genome, traits acting as mating signals are expected to be located on sex chromosomes and have a simple genetic basis. We used genome-wide markers to test these predictions in Reunion Island’s gray-white eye (Zosterops borbonicus), which has recently diversified into five distinct plumage forms. Two of them correspond to a polymorphic highland population that is separated by a steep ecological gradient from three distinct lowland forms that show narrow contact zones in plumage color traits, yet no association with environmental variables. An analysis of population structure using genome-wide SNP loci revealed two major clades corresponding to highland and lowland forms, respectively, with the latter separated further into three independent lineages corresponding to plumage forms. Coalescent tests of alternative demographic scenarios provided support for divergence of highland and lowland lineages with an intensification of gene flow in the last 60,000 years. Landscapes of genomic variation revealed that signatures of selection associated with elevation are found at multiple regions across the genome, whereas most loci associated with the lowland forms are located on the Z sex chromosome. A gene ontology analysis identified TYRP1, a Z-linked color gene, as a likely candidate locus underlying color variation among lowland forms. Our results are consistent with the role of natural selection in driving the divergence of locally adapted highland populations, and the role of sexual selection in differentiating lowland forms through reproductive isolation mechanisms, showing that both modes of lineage divergence can take place at very small geographic scales in birds.

scholarly journals Sexual selection and natural selection in bird speciation

1998 ◽  
Vol 353 (1366) ◽  
pp. 251-260 ◽  
Author(s):  
Trevor Price
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Selection ◽  
Adaptive Radiation ◽  
Species Recognition ◽  
Correlated Response ◽  
Premating Isolation ◽  
Sexual Imprinting ◽  
Sexually Selected Traits ◽  
Isolating Mechanisms ◽  
Selected Traits

The role of sexual selection in speciation is investigated, addressing two main issues. First, how do sexually selected traits become species recognition traits? Theory and empirical evidence suggest that female preferences often do not evolve as a correlated response to evolution of male traits. This implies that, contrary to runaway (Fisherian) models of sexual selection, premating isolation will not arise as an automatic side effect of divergence between populations in sexually selected traits. I evaluate premating isolating mechanisms in one group, the birds. In this group premating isolation is often a consequence of sexual imprinting, whereby young birds learn features of their parents and use these features in mate choice. Song, morphology and plumage are known recognition cues. I conclude that perhaps the main role for sexual selection in speciation is in generating differences between populations in traits. Sexual imprinting then leads to these traits being used as species recognition mechanisms. The second issue addressed in this paper is the role of sexual selection in adaptive radiation, again concentrating on birds. Ecological differences between species include large differences in size, which may in themselves be sufficient for species recognition, and differences in habitat, which seem to evolve frequently and at all stages of an adaptive radiation. Differences in habitat often cause song and plumage patterns to evolve as a result of sexual selection for efficient communication. Therefore sexual selection is likely to have an important role in generating premating isolating mechanisms throughout an adaptive radiation. It is also possible that sexual selection, by creating more allopatric species, creates more opportunity for ecological divergence to occur. The limited available evidence does not support this idea. A role for sexual selection in accelerating ecological diversification has yet to be demonstrated.

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