Descripción: Munida gregaria and M. subrugosa have been considered two different species for more than a century; however, after a recent molecular phylogenetic study, they are considered a single polymorphic species. Yet, the use of markers to diagnose species may be misleading when divergence between species is recent, since a speciation event may be obscured by the retention and stochastic sorting of ancestral polymorphisms. The morphs gregaria and subrugosa of Munida gregaria constitute an interesting case for the study of behavioural isolation since they are sympatric, breed at the same time of the year, and might have experienced a recent speciation. Mating behaviour observations and mate choice mating trials were conducted in order to investigate the potential existence of a behavioural prezygotic barrier to gene flow between these two morphs. Since factors involved in mate choice in galatheids are unknown, the four possible combinations of the two different morphs in trios were used to test for the existence of mate choice. Video recordings of all the possible trio combinations revealed that there was cross-attraction between males and females of different morphs. Females bearing partial broods participated in encounters as well as non-ovigerous females. The frequency and duration of homo- and heterotypic encounters were registered, and a reproductive isolation index was calculated for each variable for each trio. The isolation indexes calculated were not different from zero indicating random mating, and were not affected by the composition of the trio or the partial ovigerous condition of females. These results provided evidence of the absence of behavioural prezygotic barriers to gene flow between the morphs gregaria and subrugosa of M. gregaria. © 2011 Springer-Verlag and AWI.

Descripción: Anastrepha fraterculus (Wiedemann) (Diptera: Tephritidae) displays a lek mating system. Males form groups in which they simultaneously display signals (acoustical, visual, or chemical) to attract females with the purpose of mating. Females visit the lek and choose among signaling and courting males to mate. Scarce information is available in A. fraterculus about the main factors involved in female choice and the behavior of displaying males. This information could be important within the context of pest control programs with a sterile insect technique (SIT) component, because departures from normal sexual behavior caused by artificial rearing could affect males' performance in the field. In this study we assessed A. fraterculus male behavior within the leks and analyzed the importance of behavioral and morphological traits on their copulatory success. The existence of preferred places for lek formation was evaluated in field cages with trees inside and analyzed by dividing the trees in sectors according to a 3-dimensional system. Males were individually weighed, marked, and observed every 15 min. Morphometric and behavioral characteristics of successful and unsuccessful males were compared. Most successful males grouped in a region of the tree characterized by the highest light intensity in the first 2 h of the morning. Results showed that pheromone calling activity is positively associated with copulatory success. Copulations were more frequent for males calling inside the lek, indicating that pheromone calling activity and presence in the lek are key factors for copulatory success. A positive association between copulatory success and eye length was found; some characteristics of the face were also associated with copula duration and latency.

Descripción: Female birds that engage in extrapair mating may choose extrapair mates that are genetically compatible, increasing their fitness through genetic benefits, such as increased heterozygosity, to their offspring; or choose mates that are heterozygous at one or more loci. Here, we describe the extrapair mating system, explore the fitness benefits of extrapair mating and test the heterozygosity hypothesis in White-rumped Swallows (Tachycineta leucorrhoa) breeding in Argentina using a panel of microsatellite loci. Extrapair offspring accounted for 56% of the nestlings and 77% of the broods in our population. Within broods, 1-4 males fathered extrapair offspring, and in 29% of nests, all offspring were from extrapair sires. We found that broods with extrapair offspring fledged overall more young than broods with no extrapair offspring but that the young that died were more heterozygous than the ones that fledged. Although extrapair offspring had a higher probability of surviving than within-pair offspring, these 2 groups did not differ in their level of heterozygosity. Neither the heterozygosity of the social mate nor the genetic similarity of the social pair predicted the presence of extrapair young. Instead, females chose social mates that were significantly less genetically similar to them. Our results do not support the heterozygosity hypothesis and contradict 2 of its main predictions. © 2011 The Author. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. All rights reserved.

Descripción: Most animals rely on olfaction to find sexual partners, food or a habitat. The olfactory system faces the challenge of extracting meaningful information from a noisy odorous environment. In most moth species, males respond to sex pheromone emitted by females in an environment with abundant plant volatiles. Plant odours could either facilitate the localization of females (females calling on host plants), mask the female pheromone or they could be neutral without any effect on the pheromone. Here we studied how mixtures of a behaviourally-attractive floral odour, heptanal, and the sex pheromone are encoded at different levels of the olfactory pathway in males of the noctuid moth Agrotis ipsilon. In addition, we asked how interactions between the two odorants change as a function of the males' mating status. We investigated mixture detection in both the pheromone-specific and in the general odorant pathway. We used a) recordings from individual sensilla to study responses of olfactory receptor neurons, b) in vivo calcium imaging with a bath-applied dye to characterize the global input response in the primary olfactory centre, the antennal lobe and c) intracellular recordings of antennal lobe output neurons, projection neurons, in virgin and newly-mated males. Our results show that heptanal reduces pheromone sensitivity at the peripheral and central olfactory level independently of the mating status. Contrarily, heptanal-responding olfactory receptor neurons are not influenced by pheromone in a mixture, although some post-mating modulation occurs at the input of the sexually isomorphic ordinary glomeruli, where general odours are processed within the antennal lobe. The results are discussed in the context of mate localization. © 2012 Deisig et al.

Descripción: Obligate avian brood parasites can be host specialists or host generalists. In turn, individual females within generalist brood parasites may themselves be host specialists or generalists. The shiny cowbird Molothrus bonariensis is an extreme generalist, but little is known about individual female host fidelity. We examined variation in mitochondrial control region sequences from cowbird chicks found in nests of four common Argentinean hosts. Haplotype frequency distributions differed among cowbird chicks from nests of these hosts, primarily because eggs laid in nests of house wrens Troglodytes aedon differed genetically from those laid in nests of the other three hosts (chalk-browed mockingbird Mimus saturninus, brown-and-yellow marshbird Pseudoleistes virescens, and rufous-collared sparrow Zonotrichia capensis). These differences in a maternally inherited marker indicate the presence of a nonrandom laying behaviour in the females of this otherwise generalist brood parasite, which may be guided by choice for nest type, as house wrens nest in cavities whereas the other three species are open cup nesters. © 2007 The Authors.