Abstract
Empirical studies predicting the effects of the climate crisis on biodiversity loss that take into account learning ability and sexual selection are currently lacking.
Using the African butterfly Bicyclus anynana, which shows strong phenotypic plasticity (i.e., polyphenism) in response to temperature, we find that learning produces a maladaptive mate preference under climate warming.
We first modelled climate warming scenarios and then showed experimentally that as temperature becomes an unreliable cue to the onset of the dry season, adult butterflies displayed the wet season rather than the dry season form.
Female learning further suppressed their innate, adaptive sexual preference for dry season males. Instead, females learned to prefer a phenotype transiently present during the seasonal transition.
Female fertility and longevity were also indirectly affected by learning, likely reducing female fitness following climate warming.
Our results emphasize the importance of sexual selection, learning, and their fitness consequences for understanding (mal)adaptation of natural populations to climate warming.
Competing Interest Statement
The authors have declared no competing interest.
Footnotes
↵§ Co-first authors
Competing interests The authors declare no competing financial interests.
Data availability All data described in this paper is available at https://visserlab.be/publications.