Meeting Abstract

S2.2-1  Saturday, Jan. 4 10:30  The evolution of honest communication: integrating social and physiological costs of ornamentation TIBBETTS, Elizabeth; University of Michigan tibbetts@umich.edu

The honesty of animal communication systems is a central issue in behavioral and evolutionary biology. What prevents weak, low quality individuals from ‘cheating’ by signaling that they are strong? The general answer is that quality signals are costly and signaling a high level of quality is relatively more costly for low quality individuals. Thus far, honesty-ensuring costs of ornamentation have often been studied in isolation. However, real systems are likely to be complex, so multiple types of costs may be involved in maintaining the honesty of ornaments. Here, I use agonistic signals in Polistes dominulus paper wasps to test the interplay between two well-known costs: aggressive social costs and physiological costs. The results suggest that the interaction between physiology and behavior may be key to maintaining ornament accuracy. Identifying the interplay among multiple different types of costs may clarify some long-standing challenges associated with understanding the evolutionary stability animal ornaments.