Animal choruses emerge from receiver psychology.
Synchrony and alternation in large animal choruses are often viewed as adaptations by which cooperating males increase their attractiveness to females or evade predators. Alternatively, these seemingly composed productions may simply emerge by default from the receiver psychology of mate choice. This second, emergent property hypothesis has been inferred from findings that females in various acoustic species ignore male calls that follow a neighbor's by a brief interval, that males often adjust the timing of their call rhythm and reduce the incidence of ineffective, following calls, and from simulations modeling the collective outcome of male adjustments. However, the purported connection between male song timing and female preference has never been tested experimentally, and the emergent property hypothesis has remained speculative. Studying a distinctive katydid species genetically structured as isolated populations, we conducted a comparative phylogenetic analysis of the correlation between male call timing and female preference. We report that across 17 sampled populations male adjustments match the interval over which females prefer leading calls; moreover, this correlation holds after correction for phylogenetic signal. Our study is the first demonstration that male adjustments coevolved with female preferences and thereby confirms the critical link in the emergent property model of chorus evolution.
Institut de recherche sur la biologie de l'insecte (IRBI), CNRS UMR 7261, Parc de Grandmont, Université François Rabelais de Tours, 37200 Tours, France.
Michael D
MD
Greenfield
INRA, UMR 1062 CBGP, Campus International de Baillarguet, F-34988 Montferrier-sur-Lez, France.|INRA, UMR 1333 DGIMI, Université de Montpellier, Place Eugène Bataillon, 34095 Montpellier cedex 5, France.
Yareli
Y
Esquer-Garrigos
INRA, UMR 1062 CBGP, Campus International de Baillarguet, F-34988 Montferrier-sur-Lez, France.|INRA, UMR 1333 DGIMI, Université de Montpellier, Place Eugène Bataillon, 34095 Montpellier cedex 5, France.
Réjane
R
Streiff
Institut de recherche sur la biologie de l'insecte (IRBI), CNRS UMR 7261, Parc de Grandmont, Université François Rabelais de Tours, 37200 Tours, France.
Virginie
V
Party
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