Grinkov, V. G. | bioRxiv Science

bioRxiv2019

Character displacement within the breeding area questions reinforcement in Ficedula flycatchers

At present, studies of reinforcement should be focused on demonstrating how often this process occurs in nature and how important it is for speciation. Here we study the character displacement within the breeding area in the Pied Flycatcher to check the validity of the reinforcement in Ficedula flycatchers. We used point-referenced spatial data and a random forest to find the most important explanatory factors of the character displacement, and to reconstruct the phenotypic structure of the populations. The environmental temperature, and not the distance to sympatry, were proven to better describe the geographic pattern of the mean breeding plumage colour of the Pied Flycatcher populations. We conclude that ecologically distinct adaptations drive the morphological differentiation of the Old World flycatchers, and not reinforcement.

evolutionary biology↗

bioRxiv2018

Delayed start of first-time breeding and non-breeders surplus in the Western Siberian population of the European Pied Flycatcher

Non-breeders are those sexually mature individuals that do not breed in a given reproductive cycle of a population. There is a widespread belief that the presence of non-breeders can affect the actual population dynamics, as well as the population responses to environmental change (Lee et al. 2017). Sternberg (1989), using demographic data, has shown that 83% and 62% of males and females, respectively, do not breed in the first year of life in the Lower Saxony (Germany) population of the European Pied Flycatcher (Ficedula hypoleuca). Later, with experimental removal of males, it has been proven that in the Lower Saxony and Moscow Region (Russia) populations, there are many non-breeding males (Sternberg et al. 2002). For the Netherlands population of the European Pied Flycatcher, the presence of a large number of non-breeders has been demonstrated using experimental removals for both males and females (Both et al. 2017). Here we have estimated the number of non-breeders in the Western Siberian population of the European Pied Flycatcher using demographic data (11 cohorts from 2001 to 2011 of birth) and experimental removal of males. We have shown that both males and females can start to breed at the age of one to five years. The proportion of non-breeders can be 59.5% and 68.5% for first-year males and females, respectively. We discuss the differences in the proportion of non-breeders between the Western Siberian and European populations of the European Pied Flycatcher, as well as factors affecting the number of non-breeders.

zoology↗