Hybridization May Promote Variation in Cognitive Phenotypes in Experimental Guppy Hybrids
2022 (English)In: American Naturalist, ISSN 0003-0147, E-ISSN 1537-5323, Vol. 200, no 4, p. 607-619Article in journal (Refereed) Published
Abstract [en]
Hybridization is an important mechanism of evolution. While hybrids often express inferior traits and are selected against, hybridization can promote phenotypic variation and produce trait combinations distinct from the parentals, generating novel adaptive potential. Among other traits, hybridization can impact behavior and cognition and may reinforce species boundaries when hybrids show decreased cognitive abilities. However, the hypothesized role of hybridization in the diversification of cognitive phenotypes re-mains enigmatic. To test this idea, we compare the performance of female guppies (Poecilia reticulata), Endler’s guppies (Poecilia wingei), and their experimental hybrids in color association and reversal learning. In addition, we introduce a new approach to compare mul-tidimensional cognitive phenotypes. We found that hybrids showed intermediate learning abilities in both tasks compared with the pa-rentals. Moreover, hybrids had slightly higher phenotypic dispersion, new trait combinations occurred in some hybrid individuals, and the mean phenotype of one hybrid group deviated away from the axis of variation of the parentals. Our method should hence be useful in further exploring how hybridization and other evolutionary processes impact behavioral and cognitive traits. Our results suggest that hy-bridization may promote cognitive variation and generate new trait combinations, even when learning performance at the group level is intermediate between parentals.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
2022. Vol. 200, no 4, p. 607-619
Keywords [en]
associative learning, cognitive flexibility, kernel density estimation, phenotypic novelty, transgressive segregation, hybrid, hybridization, phenotype, animal, cognition, female, genetics, learning, Poecilia, Animals, Hybridization, Genetic
National Category
Biological Sciences
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:su:diva-211883DOI: 10.1086/720731ISI: 000844859000001PubMedID: 36150200Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85136277051OAI: oai:DiVA.org:su-211883DiVA, id: diva2:1714072
2022-11-282022-11-282022-11-28Bibliographically approved