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Assortative mating can limit the evolution of phenotypic plasticity

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Abstract

Phenotypic plasticity, the ability to adjust phenotype to the exposed environment, is often advantageous for organisms living in heterogeneous environments. Although the degree of plasticity appears limited in nature, many studies have reported low costs of plasticity in various species. Existing studies argue for ecological, genetic, or physiological costs or selection eliminating plasticity with high costs, but have not considered costs arising from sexual selection. Here, we show that sexual selection caused by mate choice can impede the evolution of phenotypic plasticity in a trait used for mate choice. Plasticity can remain low to moderate even in the absence of physiological or genetic costs, when individuals phenotypically adapted to contrasting environments through plasticity can mate with each other and choose mates based on phenotypic similarity. Because the non-choosy sex (i.e., males) with lower degrees of plasticity are more favored in matings by the choosy sex (i.e., females) adapted to different environments, directional selection toward higher degrees of plasticity is constrained by sexual selection. This occurs at intermediate strengths of female choosiness in the range of the parameter value we examined. Our results demonstrate that mate choice is a potential source of an indirect cost to phenotypic plasticity in a sexually selected plastic trait.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Henrik Sjödin, Magnus Lindh, Sander van Doorn, and EvolClub for fruitful discussions on the ideas and interpretations of the results. We are grateful to Göran Englund, Kenyon Mobley, Xavier Thibert-Plante, and Wojciech Uszko for their comments on earlier drafts, which improved the scientific quality and readability of the manuscript. HPC2N at Umeå University provided resources and support for computation. This project was funded by financial support from Umeå University to E.N. and Å.B. and a grant from the Swedish Research Council to R.S.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Integrated Science Lab, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

    Etsuko Nonaka & Åke Brännström

  2. Department of Ecology and Environmental Science, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

    Etsuko Nonaka

  3. Department of Biology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA

    Etsuko Nonaka

  4. Department of Mathematics and Mathematical Statistics, Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden

    Åke Brännström

  5. Evolution and Ecology Program, International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis, Laxenburg, Austria

    Åke Brännström

  6. Department of Ecology and Genetics/Limnology, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

    Richard Svanbäck

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  1. Etsuko Nonaka
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Correspondence to Etsuko Nonaka.

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Nonaka, E., Brännström, Å. & Svanbäck, R. Assortative mating can limit the evolution of phenotypic plasticity. Evol Ecol 28, 1057–1074 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-014-9728-5

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