Meeting Abstract
Behavioral isolation is a powerful reproductive barrier, often responsible for the maintenance of species boundaries between closely species. In sexually dimorphic species where males are showy, females are often attributed as the choosy sex; thus, many studies of behavioral isolation focus on the role of female preferences for conspecific male stimuli. There is also good evidence that male phenotype between species are more distinct than female phenotypes, lending to this idea that female mate choice is the driving factor in the maintenance of species boundaries. However, there is increasing evidence for the role of male mate choice, suggesting that males of sexually dimorphic species may play a larger role than formerly thought in behavioral isolation. In the banded darter (Etheostoma zonale) data show that males have strong preferences for conspecific females when presented with both a conspecific and heterospecific female stimuli. Previous studies have shown that male color and pattern are both important factors in mate recognition for female E. zonale, however there has been no comparable study done to identify how males recognize conspecific females, which lack the elaborate and species-specific ornamentation present on males. Using a machine learning approach, we identified which pattern elements of male and female E. zonale were able to significantly predict species-identify significantly above chance. We then used animated darter stimuli and video-playback to test the role of female color and pattern elements on male mate choice.
