Animal personality
Alternative reproductive tactics and personality differences
Alternative reproductive tactics (ARTs) are widely observed in inferior males who detour the female’s preference to quality males by adopting a nondisplaying or sneak mating tactic. ARTs are occasionally associated with the presence or absence of wings or substantial size differences between individuals that behave differently. Differences in reproductive tactics and morphology could promote differences in behaviours and their correlations (i.e. behavioural syndromes). Different behavioural syndrome structures between reproductive tactics within a species can provide insight into how ARTs arise and are maintained.
Wing dimorphism and pace-of-life syndrome
Dimorphism within a species can cause variation in syndromes. Some of water strider species show wing dimorphism. Individuals with short wings cannot fly, but individuals with long wings can fly and disperse long distances. The two morphs also differ in their life style. Short-wing morph is usually sexually mature early, reproduce early, but die early. However, long wing morphs usually delay their reproduction but live longer. I predict that this extremely different life style shape different correlation structures among traits.
Social evolution
Environmental effects on indirect genetic effects and their role in trait evolution
Though IGEs are known to play a key role in trait evolution, it remains largely unknown whether the strength of IGEs varies between environments. Considering environmental changes in DGEs but ignoring IGEs can be misleading in studies of trait evolution. Specifically, when predicting evolutionary trajectories of traits under the control of interacting partners, how both DGEs and IGEs change between environments and over generations must be considered in the calculation of a trait’s heritable variance and response to selection.
Indirect genetic effects in the context of mate preferences
For interacting phenotypes in which their expression depends on interactions with other individuals, the magnitude of the effects of interacting partners on trait expression can be calculated by partitioning trait variation into components explained by the focal individual or the partner. In this way, the strength of mate preference can be measured by calculating the contributions of partner identities or genotypes to the total variation of mate preferences. This approach can be useful to measure the strength of mutual mate preferences especially when the traits signalling attractiveness are not known or when many traits are involved in signalling attractiveness.
multigenerational changes in indirect genetic effects and its evolutionary outcomes
This project will examine how IGEs change during experimental evolution. How will IGEs change if populations in which IGEs have been depleted for many generations suddenly experience environments favourable for the emergence of IGEs? No empirical works have explored yet how IGEs can change flexibly in response to environmental changes over many generations.