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付記する学位プログラム名: 霊長類学・ワイルドライフサイエンス・リーディング大学院 / 京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(理学) / 甲第20045号 / 理博第4230号 / 新制||理||1609(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院理学研究科生物科学専攻 / (主査)准教授 Michael Alan Huffman, 准教授 後藤 幸織, 教授 平井 啓久 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Science / Kyoto University / DGAM

Diss. (sammanfattning). Uppsala : Sveriges lantbruksuniv., 2003. / Härtill 4 uppsatser.

In my master's thesis, I deal with reproduction of central European wolf spiders of the genus Alopecosa. Here I present patterns and duration of courtship behaviour and copulation of 15 members of the genus Alopecosa. Such information were never published before. I recognized 17 courtship elements, six of them are described here for the first time. Duration of copulation, number of palpal insertions and number of hematodochal expansions of 15 species were examined. The obtained data were analyzed, courtship and copulations among species and species groups are discussed. Courtship behaviour of two sibling species, A. striatipes and A. mariae, is compared, as well as differences in reproduction of Czech and Italian populations of A. accentuata. Based on courtship behaviour, I propose placing Alopecosa psammophila in a striatipes group. Stridulatory apparatus on male pedipalps was not detected, however, some pegs on vetral side of the abdomen in males of Alopecosa pinteroum were found. These pegs could serve as a source of vibratory signals. The thesis provides some new remarks on ecology of members of the genus Alopecosa and contains faunistical information, including those on the recent occurrence of some of the rarest Czech spiders.

京都大学 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(理学) / 甲第24470号 / 理博第4969号 / 新制||理||1709(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院理学研究科生物科学専攻 / (主査)教授 古市 剛史, 准教授 Huffman Michael Alan, 教授 今井 啓雄 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Science / Kyoto University / DFAM

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All animals face a complex environment full of obstacles that they must overcome in order to survive and reproduce. How an individual responds to its environment is essential to overcoming such obstacles in order to maximize fitness. In my thesis, I focused on the roles of persistence and aggression in achieving fitness-relevant goals. Persistence is continuing in a course of action in spite of difficulty or resistance, and aggression is any instance where an individual uses physical, and potentially damaging, force against a conspecific. I used fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster) as a model system to examine the ways in which males use persistence and aggression to attain fitness-relevant goals such as defending resources, gaining access to females, and mating. I first examined how a male’s age affected his persistence in courting recently mated females, who are generally unreceptive, and found that older males were more persistent than younger males (Chapter 2). Next, I showed that males of different ages differed in their courtship persistence in the presence of a competitor, and that males were able to subtly, but directly, interfere with one another’s courtship attempts (Chapter 3). I then demonstrated how males were able to use aggression in a mate guarding context to reduce the likelihood that a competitor male mated with their recent mate (Chapter 4), and as a form of resource defense to defend a desirable food patch in the presence of a potential mate (Chapter 5). Finally, I considered male persistence in the pursuit of unreceptive females as a form of male sexual aggression towards recently mated and sexually immature females (Chapters 5 and 6). Overall, my thesis work demonstrates how complex, and sometimes intertwined, the roles of persistence, aggression, and sexual coercion can be even within a ‘simple’ model organism, such as the fruit fly. / Dissertation / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / All animals face obstacles from their environment that they must respond to in order to survive and reproduce. In this thesis, I focused on how males use aggressive and persistent behaviours to overcome environmental obstacles. Aggression is the use of physical force against another individual, and persistence is when an individual continues in a course of action despite difficulties. I used fruit flies as a model to examine how males fight with one another over access to food and potential mates. I also studied how males persistently harass females in order to mate with them. In many experiments, I found that males use a combination of aggressive and persistent behaviours to achieve a goal. Overall, my results show that even in a simple species like fruit flies, individuals can use complex combinations of behaviours to achieve a variety of goals.

Mating behavior has a profound impact on reproductive success and the resulting genetic structure of offspring. Extra-pair copulation is a widely observed behavior within avian species. This study explored the genetic effects of mating behaviors of Prothonotary warblers, Protonotaria citrea (Parulidae), using co-dominant microsatellite markers. Prothonotary warblers are migratory songbirds that build nests in cavities, commonly found in wetland habitats. A set of artificial nest boxes were initiated by Dr Robert Reilly in 2002 in Dutch Gap, Chesterfield County Virginia, USA, a tidal tributary off the James River. From this population, 28 nest boxes were surveyed yielding 47 adults and 110 offspring. All individuals were genotyped and the multilocus genotypes were used to identify parentage. Using paternity exclusion, 27.2% of offspring were identified as resulting from extra-pair mating. Surprisingly, an additional 11.8% of offspring were classified as genetically unrelated to the resident female, being presumably the result of an egg dumping from a female not caught at the nest box. The vast majority of nest boxes, 82.1% in this study, had at least one offspring that was a result of a mating behavior outside of the social pair. There was also positive spatial autocorrelation in extra-pair paternity suggesting that these matings are not randomly distributed across the sampling landscape. These data show that Protonotaria citrea engage in both extra-pair copulations and nest parasitism. Whether this is normal mating behavior for the species, or something that is unique to this population is unknown.

In many species, including Syrian hamsters, male reproductive behavior depends on the perception of odor cues from conspecifics in the environment. Volatile odor cues are processed primarily by the main olfactory system, whereas non-volatile cues are processed primarily by the accessory olfactory system. Together, these two chemosensory systems mediate appetitive reproductive behaviors, such as attraction to female odors, and consummatory reproductive behaviors, such as copulation, in male Syrian hamsters. Main and accessory olfactory information are first integrated in the medial amygdala (MA), a limbic nucleus that is critical for the expression of reproductive behaviors. MA is densely interconnected with other ventral forebrain nuclei that receive chemosensory information and are sensitive to steroid hormones. Specifically, several lines of evidence suggest that MA may generate behavioral responses to socio-sexual odors via functional connections with the posterior bed nucleus of the stria terminalis (BNST) and medial preoptic area (MPOA). It is unknown, however, how these three nuclei act as functional circuit to adaptively regulate appetitive and consummatory reproductive behaviors. Therefore, the overarching goal of this dissertation was to determine how BNST and MPOA function, both uniquely and as a circuit with MA, to generate attraction to female odors and copulatory behaviors in male Syrian hamsters. We found that BNST is required for attraction to female odors, but not for copulation, in sexually-naïve males. In contrast, MPOA is required for both attraction to female odors and for copulation in sexually-naïve males. Surprisingly, prior sexual experience mitigated the requirement of BNST and MPOA for these behaviors. Next, we found that MA preferentially transmits female odor information to BNST and to MPOA, whereas BNST relays female and male odor information equivalently to MPOA. Finally, we found that the functional connections between MA and BNST are required for attraction to female odors but not for copulation, whereas the functional connections between MA and MPOA are required for copulation but not for attraction to female odors. Ultimately, these data may uncover a fundamental mechanism by which this ventral forebrain circuit regulates appetitive and consummatory reproductive behaviors across many species and modalities.