the cost of the sword escape performance in male swordtails剑逃跑的成本在雄性鱼的表现.pdfVIP

The Cost of the Sword: Escape Performance in Male Swordtails Alex Baumgartner, Seth Coleman, Brook Swanson* Biology Department, Gonzaga University, Spokane, Washington, United States of America Abstract The handicap theory of sexual selection posits that male display traits that are favored in mate choice come at a significant cost to performance. We tested one facet of this hypothesis in the green swordtail (Xiphophorus helleri). In this species, the lower ray of male caudal fin is extended into a ‘sword’, which serves to attract potential mates. However, bearing a long sword may increase drag and thus compromise a male’s ability to swim effectively. We tested escape performance in this species by eliciting C-start escape responses, an instinctive escape behavior, in males with various sword lengths. We then removed males’ swords and retested escape performance. We found no relationship between escape performance and sword length and no effect of sword removal on escape performance. While having a large sword may attract a predator’s attention, our results suggest that sword size does not compromise a male’s escape performance. Citation: Baumgartner A, Coleman S, Swanson B (2011) The Cost of the Sword: Escape Performance in Male Swordtails. PLoS ONE 6(1): e15837. doi:10.1371/ journal.pone.0015837 ´ Editor: Vincent Laudet, Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon, France Received August 9, 2010; Accepted November 29, 2010; Published January 6, 2011 Copyright: 2011 Baumgartner et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Funding: This study was funded by grants from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (), Gonzaga University (), and t