Dataset Information

The best smellers make the best choosers: mate choice is affected by female chemosensory receptor gene diversity in a mammal.

ABSTRACT: The products of the genes of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) are known to be drivers of pathogen resistance and sexual selection enhancing offspring genetic diversity. The MHC further influences individual odour types and social communication. However, little is known about the receptors and their volatile ligands that are involved in this type of chemical communication. Here, we have investigated chemosensory receptor genes that ultimately enable females to assess male genes through odour cues. As a model, we used an invasive population of North American raccoons ( Procyon lotor) in Germany. We investigated the effect of two groups of chemosensory receptor genes-trace amine-associated receptors (TAARs) and olfactory receptors (ORs)-on MHC-dependent mate choice. Females with more alleles of the TAAR or OR loci were more likely to choose a male with a diverse MHC. We additionally found that MHC class I genes have a stronger effect on mate choice than the recently reported effect for MHC class II genes, probably because of their immunological relevance for viral resistance. Our study is among the first to show a genetic link between behaviour and chemosensory receptor genes. These results contribute to understanding the link between genetics, olfaction and associated life-history decisions.

SUBMITTER: Santos PSC

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6304065 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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The best smellers make the best choosers: mate choice is affected by female chemosensory receptor gene diversity in a mammal.

Santos Pablo S C PSC Mezger Maja M Kolar Miriam M Michler Frank-Uwe FU Sommer Simone S

Proceedings. Biological sciences 20181201 1893

The products of the genes of the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) are known to be drivers of pathogen resistance and sexual selection enhancing offspring genetic diversity. The MHC further influences individual odour types and social communication. However, little is known about the receptors and their volatile ligands that are involved in this type of chemical communication. Here, we have investigated chemosensory receptor genes that ultimately enable females to assess male genes through ...[more]

PMID: 30963892

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Project description:Male songbirds use song to advertise their attractiveness as potential mates, and the properties of those songs have a powerful influence on female mate preferences. One idea is that males may exert themselves maximally in each song performance, consistent with female evaluation and formation of mate preferences being the primary contributors to mate choice. Alternatively, males may modulate their song behaviour to different degrees in the presence of different females, consistent with both male and female mate preferences contributing to mutual mate choice. Here we consider whether male Bengalese finches, Lonchura striata domestica, express mate preferences at the level of individual females, and whether those preferences are manifest as changes in song behaviour that are sufficient to influence female mate choice. We tested this idea by recording songs performed by individual unmated males during a series of 1 h interactions with each of many unmated females. Across recording sessions, males systematically varied both the quantity and the quality of the songs that they performed to different females. Males also varied their song properties throughout the course of each interaction, and behavioural tests using female birds revealed that songs performed at the onset of each interaction were significantly more attractive than songs performed by the same male later during the same interaction. This demonstration of context-specific variation in the properties of male reproductive signals and a role for that variation in shaping female mate preference reveals that male mate preferences play an important role in mutual mate choice in this species. Because these birds thrive so well in the laboratory and are so amenable to observation and experimentation across generations, these results yield a new model system that may prove especially advantageous in disentangling the role of male and female mate preferences in shaping mutual mate choice and its long-term benefits or consequences.

Dataset Information

The best smellers make the best choosers: mate choice is affected by female chemosensory receptor gene diversity in a mammal.

Publications

The best smellers make the best choosers: mate choice is affected by female chemosensory receptor gene diversity in a mammal.

Similar Datasets

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