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Artificial selection for food colour preferences

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journal contribution
posted on 2015-04-07, 00:00 authored by Gemma Cole, John EndlerJohn Endler
Colour is an important factor in food detection and acquisition by animals using visually based foraging. Colour can be used to identify the suitability of a food source or improve the efficiency of food detection, and can even be linked to mate choice. Food colour preferences are known to exist, but whether these preferences are heritable and how these preferences evolve is unknown. Using the freshwater fish Poecilia reticulata, we artificially selected for chase behaviour towards two different-coloured moving stimuli: red and blue spots. A response to selection was only seen for chase behaviours towards the red, with realized heritabilities ranging from 0.25 to 0.30. Despite intense selection, no significant chase response was recorded for the blue-selected lines. This lack of response may be due to the motion-detection mechanism in the guppy visual system and may have novel implications for the evolvability of responses to colour-related signals. The behavioural response to several colours after five generations of selection suggests that the colour opponency system of the fish may regulate the response to selection.

History

Journal

Proceedings of the royal society of London: biological sciences

Volume

282

Issue

1804

Pagination

1 - 9

Publisher

Royal Society, The

Location

London, Eng.

ISSN

1471-2954

Language

eng

Publication classification

C Journal article; C1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

Copyright notice

2015, Royal Society, The