Abstract
Urbanization can cause species to adjust their sexual displays, because the effectiveness of mating signals is influenced by environmental conditions. Despite many examples that show that mating signals in urban conditions differ from those in rural conditions, we do not know whether these differences provide a combined reproductive and survival benefit to the urban phenotype. Here we show that male túngara frogs have increased the conspicuousness of their calls, which is under strong sexual and natural selection by signal receivers, as an adaptive response to city life. The urban phenotype consequently attracts more females than the forest phenotype, while avoiding the costs that are imposed by eavesdropping bats and midges, which we show are rare in urban areas. Finally, we show in a translocation experiment that urban frogs can reduce risk of predation and parasitism when moved to the forest, but that forest frogs do not increase their sexual attractiveness when moved to the city. Our findings thus reveal that urbanization can rapidly drive adaptive signal change via changes in both natural and sexual selection pressures.
Original language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 374-380 |
Number of pages | 7 |
Journal | Nature Ecology and Evolution |
Volume | 3 |
Early online date | 10 Dec 2018 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - Mar 2019 |
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Data from: Adaptive changes in sexual signaling in response to urbanization
Halfwerk, W. (Contributor), Blaas, M. (Contributor), Kramer, L. (Contributor), Hijner, N. (Contributor), Trillo, P. A. (Contributor), Bernal, X. E. (Contributor), Page, R. A. (Contributor), Goutte, S. (Contributor), Ryan, M. J. (Contributor) & Ellers, J. (Contributor), Unknown Publisher, 1 Mar 2019
DOI: 10.5061/dryad.t78c588, http://datadryad.org/stash/dataset/doi:10.5061/dryad.t78c588
Dataset
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Data from: Adaptive changes in sexual signaling in response to urbanization
Hijner, N. (Contributor), Blaas, M. (Contributor), Halfwerk, W. (Contributor), Bernal, X. E. (Contributor), Trillo, P. A. (Contributor), Ellers, J. (Contributor), Kramer, L. (Contributor), Ryan, M. J. (Contributor), Page, R. A. (Contributor) & Goutte, S. (Contributor), Unknown Publisher, 13 Dec 2018
DOI: 10.5061/dryad.t78c588, https://zenodo.org/record/4988816
Dataset