Abstract
Behaviors are often correlated within broader syndromes, creating the potential for evolution in one behavior to drive evolutionary changes in other behaviors. Despite demonstrations that behavioral syndromes are common across taxa, whether this potential for evolutionary effects is realized has not yet been demonstrated. Here we show that populations of field crickets (Gryllus integer) exhibit a genetically conserved behavioral syndrome structure despite differences in average behaviors. We found that the distribution of genetic variation and genetic covariance among behavioral traits was consistent with genes and cellular mechanisms underpinning behavioral syndromes rather than correlated selection. Moreover, divergence among populations’ average behaviors was constrained by the genetically conserved behavioral syndrome. Our results demonstrate that a conserved genetic architecture linking behaviors has shaped the evolutionary trajectories of populations in disparate environments—illustrating an important way by which behavioral syndromes result in shared evolutionary fates.
Footnotes
↵b raphael.royaute{at}gmail.com
↵d avhedrick{at}ucdavis.edu
Author Contributions: N.A.D. and A.H. conceived the project and supervised the gathering of data, R.R supervised and conducted behavioral trials and analyzed the data. N.A.D., A.H., and R.R. wrote the manuscript.
Data Accessibility Statement: All relevant data will be archived at Dryad upon acceptance. All relevant code and analyses are currently available at: https://github.com/DochtermannLab/G-PopComparison
Revised version following reviewer comments