Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Evolutionary feedbacks occur when evolution in one generation alters the environment experienced by subsequent generations. Despite longstanding hypotheses that feedbacks should be nearly ubiquitous for social behaviors, we still know little about how feedbacks influence evolution. Using experimental evolution, we manipulated the social environment in which aggression was expressed and selected in fruit fly (Drosophila melanogaster) populations to allow or limit feedbacks. We selected for increased male-male aggression while allowing either positive, negative, or no feedbacks, alongside unselected controls. Populations undergoing negative feedbacks showed the weakest responses to selection, while populations undergoing positive evolutionary feedbacks evolved supernormal aggression. Further, the underlying social dynamics evolved only in the negative feedbacks treatment. Our results demonstrate that evolutionary feedbacks can alter the rate and pattern of behavioral evolution.
Institution: Rice University
Language: English
Domain: Life Sciences
Open Access status: hybrid
Funder: National Science Foundation
OpenAlex ID: W4409760327