Abstract
Competition-driven feeding niche separation is assumed to be an important driver of the morphological divergence of co-occurring animal species. However, despite a strong theoretical background, empirical studies showing a direct link between competition, diet divergence and specific morphological adaptations are still scarce. Here we studied the early steps of competition-driven eco-morphological divergence in two closely related passerines: the common nightingale (Luscinia megarhynchos) and the thrush nightingale (Luscinia luscinia). Our aim was to test whether previously-observed divergence in bill morphology and habitat in sympatric populations of both species is associated with dietary niche divergence. We collected and analysed data on (1) diet, using both DNA metabarcoding and visual identification of prey items, (2) habitat use, and (3) bill morphology in sympatric populations of both nightingale species. We tested whether the species differ in diet composition and whether there are any associations among diet, bill morphology and habitat use. We found that the two nightingale species have partitioned their feeding niches, and showed that differences in diet may be partially associated with the divergence in bill length in sympatric populations. We also observed an association between bill length and habitat use, suggesting that competition-driven habitat segregation could be linked with dietary and bill size divergence. Our results suggest that interspecific competition is an important driver of species’ eco-morphological divergence after their secondary contact, and provide insight into the early steps of such divergence in two closely related passerine species. Such divergence may facilitate species coexistence and strengthen reproductive isolation between species, and thus help to complete the speciation process.
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Data availability
Sequencing data are available from the European Nucleotide Archive under the study accession number: PRJEB37727. Metadata to the individual sequence samples are provided in the Supplementary Table S7. All other data are attached as Supplementary Material.
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Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Abel Souriau and Lucie Baránková for the field assistance and Hanka Pinkasová for her work on DNA isolation. Petr Klimeš and Petr Kozel assisted with identification of ants and beetles, respectively. We acknowledge the CF Genomics of CEITEC supported by the NCMG research infrastructure (LM2015091 funded by MEYS CR) for their support with obtaining scientific data presented in this paper. Access to computing and storage facilities owned by parties and projects contributing to the National Grid Infrastructure MetaCentrum, provided under the programme ‘Projects of Large Infrastructure for Research, Development, and Innovations’ (LM2010005), is greatly appreciated. The study was supported by a student grant of the Grant Agency of Charles University (6462/2017) to C.S., the Czech Science Foundation (Grant No. 18–14325S) and the Charles University grant PRIMUS/19/SCI/008 to R.R. Work of K.S. was supported by European Research Council project BABE 805189.
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RR, JR, JK and CS conceived ideas and designed methodology; CS, JR and TO collected the data in the field; LS and KS performed laboratory analyses; CS, JK and JR analysed the data; RR, CS, JR and JK wrote the manuscript. All authors contributed critically to the drafts and gave final approval for publication.
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This work was carried out in accordance with ethical animal research requirements of Poland according to Polish law (the Act On the Protection of Animals used for Scientific or Educational Purposes, 15.01.2015, item 266, implementing Directive 2010/63/EU of the European Parliament and of the European Council of 22.09.2010). Experiments on birds were approved by the Local Ethic Committee for Scientific Experiments on Animals in Poznań, Poland (permission No. 17/2015) and the Polish National Nature Conservation Authority (permission no. DZP-WG.6401.03.123.2017.dl.3). Ringing was performed under license No. 114225895 of the national ringing centre in Gdańsk (Ornithological Station of the Polish Academy of Sciences).
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Sottas, C., Reif, J., Kreisinger, J. et al. Tracing the early steps of competition-driven eco-morphological divergence in two sister species of passerines. Evol Ecol 34, 501–524 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-020-10050-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-020-10050-4