Ashley King
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I am interested in animal behavior, sexual selection, and alternative mating tactics.
Sexual selection results from differential reproductive success among individuals and has led to elaborate ornaments and weapons in many taxa. Males develop these traits more frequently than females because of the greater investment in offspring by females relative to males and the greater variation in the reproductive success of males relative to females. Ornaments and weapons can be advantageous for intrasexual competition (e.g. male-male competition, sperm competition), mate choice, or a combination of the two. However, these traits do not come without costs. If males are unable to afford the extreme ornaments or weapons that evolve due to sexual selection, another way for them to achieve copulations with females is the evolution of alternative tactics.
I am studying alternative male mating tactics in the horned beetle, Trypoxylus dichotomus (also referred to as Allomyrina dichotoma). I began the PhD program at the University of Montana in the fall of 2005 and completed my first field season in Taiwan in the summer of 2006 as a part of the NSF (National Science Foundation in the US)/NSC (National Science Council in Taiwan) East Asia and Pacific Summer Institutes program. I work in collaboration with Dr. Chung-Ping Lin at Tunghai University in Taiwan, Yi-Bin Fan at the Taiwan Forestry Research Institute, and Yoshihito Hongo at Kyoto University in Japan. My field site in Nantou county, Taiwan is located at Lian Hwa-Tz Station run by the Taiwan Forestry Research Institute. Both Taiwan and Japan, where other populations of this beetle species can be found, will be the sites of my research.
I am interested in both intra- and inter-population differences in mating tactics. The primary questions that I am interested in answering include:
1) What is the nature of selection on horns in wild populations of this species?
2) What are the costs of horns?
3) Does this species exhibit alternative mating tactics?
4) What is the nature of population divergence?
