title: Heritable variation in colour patterns mediating individual recognition.
abstract: Understanding the developmental and evolutionary processes that generate and maintain variation in natural populations remains a major challenge for modern biology. Populations ofPolistes fuscatuspaper wasps have highly variable colour patterns that mediate individual recognition. Previous experimental and comparative studies have provided evidence that colour pattern diversity is the result of selection for individuals to advertise their identity. Distinctive identity-signalling phenotypes facilitate recognition, which reduces aggression between familiar individuals inP. fuscatuswasps. Selection for identity signals may increase phenotypic diversity via two distinct modes of selection that have different effects on genetic diversity. Directional selection for increased plasticity would greatly increase phenotypic diversity but decrease genetic diversity at associated loci. Alternatively, heritable identity signals under balancing selection would maintain genetic diversity at associated loci. Here, we assess whether there is heritable variation underlying colour pattern diversity used for facial recognition in a wild population ofP. fuscatuswasps. We find that colour patterns are heritable and not Mendelian, suggesting that multiple loci are involved. Additionally, patterns of genetic correlations among traits indicated that many of the loci underlying colour pattern variation are unlinked and independently segregating. Our results support a model where the benefits of being recognizable maintain genetic variation at multiple unlinked loci that code for phenotypic diversity used for recognition.
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurobiology and Behavior, Cornell University, Ithaca 14853, NY, USA; Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 48190, MI, USA.
authors.forename: Michael J
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-3949-7873
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Sheehan
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor 48190, MI, USA; Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology, Okinawa 904-0495, Japan.
authors.forename: Juanita
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Choo
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology , University of Michigan , Ann Arbor 48190, MI , USA.
authors.forename: Elizabeth A
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-5625-892X
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Tibbetts
keywords: animal model; colour patterning; genetic architecture; individual recognition; negative frequency-dependent selection; paper wasps