Females alter their mate preferences depending on hybridization risk

Abstract

Mating with another species is often maladaptive because it generally results in no or low-fitness offspring. When hybridization is sufficiently costly, individuals should avoid mating with heterospecifics even if it reduces their ability to mate with high-quality conspecifics that resemble heterospecifics. Here, we used spadefoot toads, Spea multiplicata, to evaluate whether females alter their preferences for conspecific male sexual signals (call rate) depending on heterospecific presence. When presented with conspecific signals against a background including both conspecific and heterospecific signals, females preferred male traits that were most dissimilar to heterospecifics—even though these signals are potentially associated with lower-quality mates. However, when these same females were presented with a background that included only conspecific signals, some females switched their preferences, choosing conspecific signals that were exaggerated and indicative of high-quality conspecific mates. Because only some females switched their preferences between these two chorus treatments, there was no population-level preference for exaggerated conspecific male signals in the absence of heterospecifics. These results show that hybridization risk can alter patterns of mate choice and, consequently, sexual selection on male signals. Moreover, they emphasize that the strength and expression of reproductive barriers between species (such as mate choice) can be context-dependent.