Meeting Abstract
Imprinting-like learning, where individuals learn to prefer certain characteristics in future mates based on their juvenile social environment, is pervasive across animal taxa. And, learning ability associated with imprinting-like learning is hypothesized to play a prominent role in mate preference development and sexual ornament evolution. However, the genetics that facilitate imprinting-like learning largely remain unknown. Here we utilized the butterfly Bicyclus anynana, a species which exhibits imprinting-like learning and has a published genome, to identify candidate genes associated with imprinting-like learning. We re-sequenced the genome of 84 B. anyana butterflies, half that mated with a 4-spot male in choice trials after pre-mating exposure to a 4-spot male, and half that did not. After aligning this genomic sequence to the B. anynana reference genome and accounting for relatedness between butterflies, we identified multiple regions in the genome highly associated with imprinting-like learning. One of these peaks of association was substantially larger and more highly associated with learning than the others, and encompasses seven genes, three of which are known to be associated with neural processing. We hypothesize that natural variation in neural processing underlies variation in imprinting-like learning, which has implications for the evolution of mating preference.
