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Summary: vol. 165, no. 5 the american naturalist may 2005
Female Polymorphism, Frequency Dependence, and Rapid
Evolutionary Dynamics in Natural Populations
Erik I. Svensson,* Jessica Abbott,
and Roger Ha¨rdling
Section for Animal Ecology, Ecology Building, Lund University,
SE-223 62 Lund, Sweden
Submitted September 15, 2004; Accepted December 20, 2004;
Electronically published March 14, 2005
abstract: Rapid evolutionary change over a few generations has
been documented in natural populations. Such changes are observed
as organisms invade new environments, and they are often triggered
by changed interspecific interactions, such as differences in predation
regimes. However, in spite of increased recognition of antagonistic
male-female mating interactions, there is very limited evidence that
such intraspecific interactions could cause rapid evolutionary dy-
namics in nature. This is because ecological and longitudinal data
from natural populations have been lacking. Here we show that in
a color-polymorphic damselfly species, male-female mating inter-
actions lead to rapid evolutionary change in morph frequencies be-
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