Signaling and Priming Communication: Independent Roles in the Reproductive Isolation of Spatially-Separated Populations of Rodents

This research concerned the relative potential for signaling and priming incompatibilities to promote reproductive isolation in rodents. Signaling is defined here as involving behavioral responses, while priming involves endocrine responses. Compatibility of both types of communications was tested between two widely separated and markedly diverging populations of deermice, and between equally separated but much less divergent populations of house mice. Signaling compatibility was assessed by comparing the amount of agression toward young females by adult males when the two sexes were of the same vs the different stock of the same species. Priming compatibility was tested by measuring the relative amounts of uterine growth induced in young females by exposure to adult males. No signaling or priming incompatibilities were detected during cross-testing of the house mouse stocks. A degree of developing reproductive isolation was observed between the two deermouse populations, however, and this isolation was reinforced by independently occurring incompatibilities of both the signaling and the priming type. The signaling incompatibility was particularly dramatic, manifesting itself in the killing of young females by adult males. The present results provide the first demonstration of a priming incompatibility supporting reproductive isolation in diverging populations of a mammal. Furthermore, our results suggest that signaling and priming systems are independently subject to evolutionary change even when both systems probably operate through the same sensory modality.