Our learning paper is covered by German radio

Our recent paper on learned mate preferences in Calopteryx splendens females has now also been covered in German Radio. An excerpt from an interview Joachim Budde made with me in the German Radio channel Deutschland Funk is available here, unfortunately only in German. Enjoy!

Climatic niche similarity and geographic range limits in ecologically similar co-existing damselflies

Dear all,
Now it is time to discuss one of my papers again. Together with Keith Larson and Erik Svensson, I am currently working on a paper that investigates niche divergence in Calopteryx damselflies.

Speciation in the genus Calopteryx is largely thought to be de-coupled from ecology, and reproductive isolation seems to have evolved independent of habitat ecology, through sexual selection, social interactions, learning and/or genetic incompatibilities. For this reason, ecological differences between closely related odonates are a priori expected to be relatively minor, and the modest differences that exist are likely to have evolved post-speciation, reflecting ecological divergence after reproductive isolation was already achieved. We tested these predictions using a large habitat data set for the two largely co-existing species Calopteryx splendens and C. virgo in Sweden and Finland and then employed spatial modelling techniques to identify the:

(i) environmental habitat characteristics, amount of niche overlap and degree of habitat specialisation,

(ii) combined and interactive effects of environment and predators and

(iii) ecological differences between allopatric and sympatric populations.

It will be great to discuss our findings with you next week (as usual we meet on Wednesday the 6th of October at 10:15 at the Darwin room, Lund University). Erik has also suggested to read a recent paper by John E. McCormack, Amanda J. Zellmer, and L. Lacey Knowles. Their work focused on niche divergence and its role in speciation in Mexican Jays.

DOES NICHE DIVERGENCE ACCOMPANY ALLOPATRIC DIVERGENCE IN APHELOCOMA JAYS AS PREDICTED UNDER ECOLOGICAL SPECIATION?: INSIGHTS FROM TESTS WITH NICHE MODELS

I will circulate the Evolution paper by McCormack et al. (2010) and the manuscript via email. If I have not included you in the email list and you would like to read and comment on these papers, then please send an email Maren.Wellenreuther@zooekol.lu.se

I will bring fika to the next meeting.

Have fun, Maren

A role for ecology in male mate discrimination of immigrant females in Calopteryx damselflies?

Dear all,

We have recently published another Calopteryx paper, this time in the Biological Journal of the Linnean Society. The paper is investigating male mate preferences and asks the question if males have the ability to distinguish between immigrant and resident females. Below is the abstract and the link to the paper.
 
A role for ecology in male mate discrimination of immigrant females in Calopteryx damselflies?

MAREN WELLENREUTHER, ELODIE VERCKEN and ERIK I. SVENSSON

ABSTRACT: Sexual selection against immigrants is a mechanism that can regulate premating isolation between populations but, so far, few field studies have examined whether males can discriminate between immigrant and resident females. Males of the damselfly Calopteryx splendens show mate preferences and are able to force pre-copulatory tandems. We related male mate responses to the ecological characteristics of female origin, geographic distances between populations, and morphological traits of females to identify factors influencing male mate discrimination. Significant heterogeneity between populations in male mate responses towards females was found. In some populations, males discriminated strongly against immigrant females, whereas the pattern was reversed or non-significant in other populations. Immigrant females were particularly attractive to males when they came from populations with similar predation pressures and densities of conspecifics. By contrast, immigrant females from populations with strongly dissimilar predation pressures and conspecific densities were not attractive to males. Differences in the abiotic environment appeared to affect mating success to a lesser degree. This suggests that male mate discrimination is context-dependent and influenced by ecological differences between populations, a key prediction of ecological speciation theory. The results obtained in the present study suggest that gene-flow is facilitated between ecologically similar populations.


http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1095-8312.2010.01464.x/pdf

Our research is featured in TREE and we get a cover photo!

In the latest issue of Trends in Ecology & Evolution, the cover photo is a couple of mating damselflies (Ischnura elegans), one of our favourite study species. It is of course very pleasing to see both this photo on the cover, and the flattering coverage of our research in a a review article by Charlie K. Cornwallis and Tobias Uller, entitled Towards an evolutionary ecology of sexual traits. Cornwallis and Uller discusses a number of recent articles about the dynamics of sexual selection over several generations, including a paper published by Tom Gosden and me entitled Spatial and temporal dynamics in a sexual selection mosaic (in Evolution, 2008).

Here is the abstract of the review article by Cornwallis and Uller:

References and further reading may be available for this article. To view references and further reading you must purchase this article.

Charlie K. Cornwallis^a, and Tobias Uller^a

^a Edward Grey Institute, Department of Zoology, University of Oxford, South Parks Road, Oxford, UK, OX1 3PS

Empirical studies of sexual traits continue to generate conflicting results, leading to a growing awareness that the current understanding of this topic is limited. Here we argue that this is because studies of sexual traits fail to encompass three important features of evolution. First, sexual traits evolve via natural selection of which sexual selection is just one part. Second, selection on sexual traits fluctuates in strength, direction and form due to spatial and temporal environmental heterogeneity. Third, phenotypic plasticity is ubiquitous and generates selection and responses to selection within and across generations. A move from purely gene-focused theories of sexual selection towards research that explicitly integrates development, ecology and evolution is necessary to break the stasis in research on sexual traits.

Two exciting lab-meetings this week!

This week, I have the pleasure to announce two lab-meetings, one on Wednesday (10.00-12.00) and the other on Thursday (10.00-12.00). Both will take place in "Darwin", as usual. I hope as many as possible will come. There will be no article to read, but interesting research presentations.

On Wednesday, Shawn Kuchta and I will present our talks that we will give at the coming European Evolutionary Biology Meeting (ESEB), that will take place in Turin (Italy) next week. Shawn will talk about selective predation on wing morphology and geometric morphometrics in calopterygid damselflies, i. e. the work he has done during his two year postdoctoral visit in Lund. Shawn will present his talk in Turin in a symposium organized by me and Alexis Chaine about the role of ecology and selective agents in evolutionary biology studies. You can find the programme here for that symposium.

As for myself, I will talk about the genetics of life-history trade-off, which is the topic of a symposium at the ESEB-meeting where I have the pleasure of being an invited speaker (the other one being Derek Roff). Our presentations will be very informal, and there will be room for suggestions of how Shawn and I can improve our presentations. We are looking forward to your feedback!

On Thursday, my colleague Almut Kelber from the department of Cell- and Organismal Biology (COB) and her postdoc Miriam will visit us to talk a little bit about our collaboration that has been ongoing the last summer about sensory physiology, colour vision and colour physiology in our model damselfly species Ischnura elegans (see picture above!). I will also give a short presentation about damselflies as model organisms in ecology and evolution. Mirjam will bring fika, and I encourage all of you who might be interested in this to join in!

Welcome to Sophia Engel, our new postdoc!

This bloggpost has also been published on the CAnMove-blogg.

Together with my co-PI Anders Hedenström, I am pleased to introduce our first CAnMove postdoc Sophia Engel. Sophia will join CAnMove soon on a project dealing with insect flight adaptations and evolutionary ecology, dealing with adaptations for dispersal and predator avoidance. This is an exciting project that will combine field and wind tunnel studies, using moths and calopterygid damselflies as model organisms. Both Anders and I are thus extremely happy to host Sophia as a shared postdoc. Below, I will let Sophia introduce herself in her own words:

"I am interested in the interaction of physiological capabilities, ecology, and evolution in shaping a species’ life-history. My previous research has been at the interface of ecology and physiology: For my doctoral work I focused on avian migration. I combined wind tunnel studies and detailed measurements of water- and energy budgets at various ambient conditions with modeling approaches, and showed that dehydration can be a limiting factor for flight duration under naturalistic ambient conditions for my model species, the Rose-coloured Starling. A more recent project is focused on understanding the effects of climate variability on primary productivity, arthropod consumer performance and ultimately the structure and function of the food web in the Chihuahuan Desert of central New Mexico. I am looking forward to combine these two lines of research, wind tunnel studies and insect ecology, in the project “insect flight and morphological trade-offs” at the CAnMove center in Lund!"