Meeting Abstract
Different environmental conditions are expected to generate different selective pressures. We investigated whether variation in climatic conditions, breeding season length, and number of offspring produced per season in populations of Dark-eyed Junco Junco hyemalis breeding at different elevations led to variation in extra-pair paternity and in the use of a sexually-selected male signal, the amount of white in the tail. Using 12 microsatellite loci, we found differences in extra-pair paternity rates among our populations, with a low extra-pair paternity rate (20% of nests) at high elevations, a high rate (57%) at middle elevations, and an intermediate rate (38%) at low elevations. Despite the elevational differences in the potential strength of sexual selection indicated by this variation in extra-pair paternity rate, we found no differences among elevations in mean values of tail white or tail white asymmetry, and no differences in the strength of the correlation between tail white and either of two indices of male quality, a measure of the honesty of the signal. Persistent gene flow among elevations may explain the lack of differentiation in the tail white signal.
