2010 Spring IU Animal Behavior Colloquia

You are cordially invited to attend the 2010 Spring IU Animal Behavior Colloquia.

Rebecca Fuller, Department of Animal Biology, University of Illinois, will present:

Teasing Apart the Many Effects of Lighting Environment on Color Pattern and Preference in the Bluefin Killifish

Friday, February 12, 2010
4:00 p.m.
Myers Hall, Rm. 130

Co-sponsored with the Evolution, Ecology & Behavior Program

ABSTRACT:
Sensory drive proposes that lighting conditions have large effects on female mating preferences and male color patterns. Delineating the effects of lighting conditions is difficult because they can influence female mating preferences via three mechanisms. Genetic differentiation can emerge due to selection under different lighting conditions. Development in different lighting conditions can induce plasticity of the visual system. Lighting conditions can immediately alter color perception by filtering wavelengths and altering visual backgrounds.

In this talk, I will present data on a large study examining the various effects of lighting environment on male coloration, physiology of the visual system, and female mating preferences in the bluefin killifish, Lucania goodei. Bluefin killifish are intriguing for studies of sensory drive because they occur under a wide variety of lighting habitats ranging from crystal clear springs to tannin-stained swamps, and previous work has demonstrated that populations differ in various aspects of male color pattern as well as vision physiology.

Our underlying motivation is to determine the extent to which “sensory bias” can account for the evolution of female mating preferences. Sensory bias states that female mating preferences evolve as a correlated response to natural selection on non-mating behaviors that share a common sensory system with mating preferences. The underlying assumption is that there are strong correlations (due to pleiotropy) between mating preferences and non-mating behaviors such as foraging. We test this assumption by measuring correlations between foraging preferences and mating preferences both experimentally and using simulated neural networks.