An inconvenient tooth: evaluating female choice in multiple paternity using an evolutionarily and ecologically important vertebrate clade

Decapod Crustacea (shrimps, lobsters, and crabs) employ a range of different reproductive mechanisms that affect paternity, but does it include cryptic female choice (CFC)? This chapter focuses on events surrounding the fertilization of an egg by a sperm and the opportunities where cryptic fertilization bias might occur. It presents a new model of decapod fertilization, defined in terms of space and time to fertilization. Females have several ways to store sperm and influence fertilization outcomes, which should be affected by (1) their growth pattern (indeterminate or determinate), (2) the link between molting and mating (soft-shell or hard-shell mating), (3) fertilization latency, and (4) how sperm are protected (no protection or storage is separate from the oviduct, or storage in a seminal receptacle is linked to the oviduct). Paternity data available for 26 decapods show that in 85% of species, females carry broods with multiple paternity and 15% have broods with single paternity. Therefore many (if not most) females mate with several males and so they certainly could make a choice. However, whether this pattern is due to CFC or merely reflects mating history is a matter of debate. At present, there are no unequivocal data that demonstrate CFC: outcomes caused by male mate guarding and sperm competition cannot be distinguished from female choice. The challenge is to understand what females might be choosing and how to detect that choice. Detecting CFC in field data is difficult, if not impossible, because both single and multiple paternities could be favored.

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Female control of paternity by spawning site choice in a cooperatively polyandrous cichlid

Behaviour ◽

10.1163/1568539x-00003242 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 152 (2) ◽

pp. 231-245 ◽

Cited By ~ 4

Author(s):

Ning Li ◽

Tomohiro Takeyama ◽

Lyndon Alexander Jordan ◽

Masanori Kohda

Keyword(s):

Female Choice ◽

Multiple Paternity ◽

Cichlid Fish ◽

Cryptic Female Choice ◽

Mating Partner ◽

Spawning Site ◽

Direct Benefits ◽

Nest Design ◽

Narrow Area ◽

Female Control

Multiple mating of females is widespread, and females often obtain direct and/or indirect benefits by mating with multiple males. However, female control of multiple paternity broods is usually only possible in internally fertilising animals with complex reproductive systems including cryptic female choice. Here we present direct evidence that a cooperative polyandrous cichlid fish with external fertilisation, Julidochromis transcriptus, uses environmental factors to manipulate male access to, and therefore paternity of, their egg clutches. Polyandrous females receive more paternal investment from both of large alpha males and small beta males than monogamous females. We used a ‘step nest’ design, in which large alpha males and small beta males were restricted to the wide and narrow nest areas respectively, and found that when kept in polyandrous trios, females laid their egg clutches exactly at the borderline between the two regions each male could access. In contrast, females in pairs laid their clutches in either the wide or narrow area depending on the size of their mating partner. Our results demonstrate that polyandrous females carefully choose egg deposition site, increasing the direct benefits they receive from mating partners by using environmental structures to manipulate paternity. In this way, externally fertilising J. transcriptus manipulate male behaviour in a manner similar to cryptic female choice in internally fertilising animals.

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Faculty Opinions recommendation of Experimental modifications imply a stimulatory function for male tsetse fly genitalia, supporting cryptic female choice theory.

Faculty Opinions – Post-Publication Peer Review of the Biomedical Literature ◽

10.3410/f.1164921.625758 ◽

2009 ◽

Author(s):

Joachim Kurtz ◽

Sophie Armitage

Keyword(s):

Female Choice ◽

Choice Theory ◽

Tsetse Fly ◽

Cryptic Female Choice

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Reproductive behavior

10.1093/oso/9780198797500.003.0013 ◽

2018 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Rachel Olzer ◽

Rebecca L. Ehrlich ◽

Justa L. Heinen-Kay ◽

Jessie Tanner ◽

Marlene Zuk

Keyword(s):

Sexual Selection ◽

Sexual Conflict ◽

Female Choice ◽

Reproductive Behavior ◽

Mating Systems ◽

Insect Behavior ◽

Sequential Approach ◽

Evolutionary Mechanisms ◽

Anatomy And Physiology ◽

Males And Females

Sex and reproduction lie at the heart of studies of insect behavior. We begin by providing a brief overview of insect anatomy and physiology, followed by an introduction to the overarching themes of parental investment, sexual selection, and mating systems. We then take a sequential approach to illustrate the diversity of phenomena and concepts behind insect reproductive behavior from pre-copulatory mate signalling through copulatory sperm transfer, mating positions, and sexual conflict, to post-copulatory sperm competition, and cryptic female choice. We provide an overview of the evolutionary mechanisms driving reproductive behavior. These events are linked by the economic defendability of mates or resources, and how these are allocated in each sex. Under the framework of economic defendability, the reader can better understand how sexual antagonistic behaviors arise as the result of competing optimal fitness strategies between males and females.

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Female Choice in Middendorff's Grasshopper-Warbler (Locustella Ochotensis)

The Auk ◽

10.1093/auk/103.4.694 ◽

1986 ◽

Vol 103 (4) ◽

pp. 694-700 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Hisashi Nagata

Keyword(s):

Mate Choice ◽

Female Choice ◽

Morphological Characteristics ◽

Female Mate Choice ◽

Food Abundance ◽

Territory Size ◽

Territory Quality ◽

Female Mate ◽

Nest Sites ◽

Grasshopper Warbler

Abstract Morphological and territorial factors that influence female mate choice were examined in the monogamous Middendorff's Grasshopper-Warbler (Locustella ochotensis) on an islet near Fukuoka, Japan. I assumed that pairing date corresponded with female mate choice. Pairing date was correlated with both territory size and food abundance but was not correlated with selected morphological characteristics of males. Territorial quality was assumed to be correlated with territory size because preferable food resources and nest sites were distributed randomly. I conclude that female mate choice was influenced by territory quality rather than by the morphological characteristics of males.

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