Search

Mate-choice copying is a type of social learning in which females can change their mate preference after observing the choice of others. This behaviour can potentially affect population evolution and ecology, namely through increased dispersal and reduced local adaptation. Here, we simulated the effects of mate-choice copying in populations expanding across an environmental gradient to understand whether it can accelerate or retard the expansion process. Two mate-choice copying strategies were used: (i) when females target a single individual and (ii) when females target similar individuals. We also simulated cases where the male trait singled out by females with mate choice maps perfectly onto his genotype or is influenced by genotype-by-environment interactions. These rules have different effects on the results. When a trait is determined by genotype alone, populations where copier females target all similar males expand faster and the number of potential copiers increased. However, when preference is determined by genotype-by-environment interactions, populations where copier females target a single male had higher dispersal and also expand faster, but the potential number of copiers decreases. The results show that mate-choice copying can accelerate the expansion process, although its adaptiveness depends on the information animals use in different contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In heterogeneous environments, dispersal may be hampered not only by direct costs, but also because immigrants may be locally maladapted. While maladaptation affects both sexes, this cost may be modulated in females if they express mate preferences that are either adaptive or maladaptive in the new local population.Dispersal costs under local adaptation may be mitigated if it is possible to switch to expressing traits of locally adapted residents. In a sexual selection context, immigrant females may learn to mate with locally favoured males. Mate‐choice copying is a type of social learning, where individuals, usually females, update their mating preferences after observing others mate. If it allows immigrant females to switch from maladapted to locally adapted preferences, their dispersal costs are mitigated as mate choice helps them create locally adapted offspring.To study if copying can promote the evolution of dispersal, we created an individual‐based model to simulate the coevolution of four traits: copying, dispersal, a trait relevant for local adaptation, and female preference. We contrast two scenarios with copying—either unconditional or conditional such that only dispersers copy—with a control scenario that lacks any copying.We show copying to lead to higher dispersal, especially if copying is conditionally expressed. This leads to an increase in gene flow between patches and, consequently, a decrease in local adaptation and trait‐preference correlations.While our study is phrased with female preference as the learned trait, one may generally expect social learning to mitigate dispersal costs, with consequent feedback effects on the spatial dynamics of adaptation. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Knowing which of correlated traits are more strongly targeted by selection is crucial to understand the evolutionary process. For example, it could help in understanding how behavioural and cognitive adaptations to social living have evolved.Social competence is the ability of animals to optimize their social behaviours according to the demands of their social environment. It is a behavioural performance trait that expresses how well a whole organism performs complex social tasks, such as choosing mates, raising offspring, participating in dominance hierarchies, solving conflicts or forming social bonds. Non‐social competence, on the other hand, is the ability of animals to optimize their non‐social behaviours according to the demands of their non‐social environment, such as finding food or avoiding predators.Social and non‐social cognition are correlated lower‐level traits of social and non‐social competence, respectively, encompassing the underlying psychological and neural mechanisms of behaviour that allow animals to acquire, encode, store and recall information about their social and non‐social environments.Here, we employ the theoretical framework that selection acts on performance traits first and on lower‐level traits only secondarily, to propose a new approach to the study of the evolution of social cognition.We hypothesize that when selection favours social competence, the cognitive system becomes more adapted to the social domain, making species biased for social information, and increasing their degree of sociality. The opposite can happen when selection favours non‐social competence.The level of specialization that the cognitive system can attain depends on whether social and non‐social competence are correlated with the same cognitive lower‐level traits. This in turn will determine whether species will evolve a type of social cognition that is general—that contributes with cognitive abilities that can be used in both social and non‐social environments—or modular—that contributes with cognitive abilities that are specific to the social environment. A free Plain Language Summary can be found within the Supporting Information of this article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reproductive interference is considered a strong ecological force, potentially leading to species exclusion. This supposes that the net effect of reproductive interactions is strongly negative for one, or both, of the species involved. Testing this requires a comprehensive analysis of interspecific reproductive interactions, accounting for the order and timing of mating events, and for their effects on either fertility or fecundity. To this aim, we measured reproductive interactions among spider mites, using a focal species, Tetranychus urticae, and an invasive (T. evansi) and a resident (T. ludeni) species, varying the mating sequence and interval, and measuring the effect of such crosses on fecundity and offspring sex ratio (a measure of fertility, as these species are haplodiploid). We found that mating with heterospecifics affected fecundity and sex ratio negatively or positively, depending on the species involved, and on the order and timing of mating events. Overall, the net effect of reproductive interactions was weak despite strong effects of particular events. In natural situations, the outcome of reproductive interactions will thus hinge upon the frequency of each event. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mate-choice copying is a type of social learning in which females can change their mate preference after observing the choice of others. This behaviour can potentially affect population evolution and ecology, namely through increased dispersal and reduced local adaptation. Here, we simulated the effects of mate-choice copying in populations expanding across an environmental gradient to understand whether it can accelerate or retard the expansion process. Two mate-choice copying strategies were used: (i) when females target a single individual and (ii) when females target similar individuals. We also simulated cases where the male trait singled out by females with mate choice maps perfectly onto his genotype or is influenced by genotype-by-environment interactions. These rules have different effects on the results. When a trait is determined by genotype alone, populations where copier females target all similar males expand faster and the number of potential copiers increased. However, when preference is determined by genotype-by-environment interactions, populations where copier females target a single male had higher dispersal and also expand faster, but the potential number of copiers decreases. The results show that mate-choice copying can accelerate the expansion process, although its adaptiveness depends on the information animals use in different contexts.

Major depressive disorder (MDD) is the most severe form of depression and the leading cause of disability worldwide. When considering research approaches aimed at understanding MDD, it is important that their effectiveness is evaluated. Here, we assessed the effectiveness of original studies on MDD by rating their contributions to subsequent medical papers on the subject, and we compared the respective contribution of findings from non-human primate (NHP) studies and from human-based in vitro or in silico research approaches. For each publication, we conducted a quantitative citation analysis and a systematic qualitative analysis of the citations. In the majority of cases, human-based research approaches (both in silico and in vitro ) received more citations in subsequent human research papers than did NHP studies. In addition, the human-based approaches were considered to be more relevant to the hypotheses and/or to the methods featured in the citing papers. The results of this study suggest that studies based on in silico and in vitro approaches are taken into account by medical researchers more often than are NHP-based approaches. In addition, these human-based approaches are usually cheaper and less ethically contentious than NHP studies. Therefore, we suggest that the traditional animal-based approach for testing medical hypotheses should be revised, and more opportunities created for further developing human-relevant innovative techniques.

Background: Zootherapy inventories are important as they contribute to the world documentation of the prevalence, importance and diversity of the medicinal use of animals in traditional human communities. The present study aims to contribute with a more valuable example of the zootherapy practices of a traditional community in the Brazilian Amazonia - the "Riozinho do Anfrísio" Extractive Reserve, in Northern Brazil., Methods: We used the methods of participant observation and semi-structured interviews, applied to 25 informants. We employed the combined properties of two indices to measure the medicinal importance of each cited species to the studied community, as well as their versatility in the treatment of diseases: the well known Use Value (UV) and the Medicinal Applications Value (MAV) that we developed., Results: We recorded 31 species of medicinal animals from six taxonomic categories, seven of which are new to science. The species are used for the treatment of 28 diseases and one species is used as an amulet against snakebites. The five species with the highest UV indices are the most popular and valued by the studied community. Their contrasting MAV indices indicate that they have different therapeutic properties: specific (used for the treatment of few diseases; low versatility) and all-purpose (several diseases; high versatility). Similarly, the most cited diseases were also those that could be treated with a larger number of animal species. Ten species are listed in the CITES appendices and 21 are present in the IUCN Red List. The knowledge about the medicinal use of the local fauna is distributed evenly among the different age groups of the informants., Conclusions: This study shows that the local fauna represents an important medicinal resource for the inhabitants of the protected area. The combined use of the UV and MAV indices allowed identifying the species with the highest therapeutic potential. This type of information about a species may be of interest to pharmacological research, and is crucial to its conservation, since it helps signaling the species that may undergo higher hunting pressures. Data on zootherapy can also be of interesting to ecologists by contributing to indicators of local biodiversity richness.

Organisms require information to make decisions about fitness-affecting resources, such as mates. Animals may extract "personal information" about potential mates by observing their physical characteristics or extract additional "public information" by observing their mating performance [1]. Mate copying by females [2-6] is a form of public information use that may reduce uncertainty about male quality, allowing more adaptive choices [2]. Experimental studies have produced evidence that female mate copying occurs in several species of fish [3], birds [5-7], and mammals [8], including humans [9]. We report the first evidence that a female invertebrate can exploit public information to select mates. In a first experiment, Drosophila melanogaster female prospectors increased their time in the attraction zones of poor-condition males, but not of good-condition males, after having observed them with a model female. This suggests that females appraised prospective mates by exploiting public information and did so mainly when it contrasted with personal information. In a second experiment, prospector females preferably mated with males of the color type they had previously observed copulating over males of the rejected color type, suggesting that female Drosophila can generalize socially learned information. The complexity of Drosophila decision-making suggests an unprecedented level of cognition in invertebrates. Our findings have implications for evolution given that socially learned mate preferences may lead to reproductive isolation, setting the stage for speciation [10].