Prior mating success can affect allocation towards future sexual signaling in crickets

10.7287/peerj.preprints.481 ◽

2014 ◽

Author(s):

Rachel Chiswell ◽

Madeline Girard ◽

Claudia Fricke ◽

Michael Kasumovic

Keyword(s):

Social Interactions ◽

Adult Male ◽

Mating Success ◽

Social Feedback ◽

Field Crickets ◽

Sexually Selected Traits ◽

Sexual Signalling ◽

Black Field ◽

Male Calling ◽

Selected Traits

Fitness is often correlated with the expression level of a sexually selected trait. However, sexually selected traits are costly to express such that investment in their expression should be optimised to maximize their overall fitness gains. Social interactions, in the form of successful and unsuccessful matings, may offer males one type of feedback allowing them to gauge how to allocate their resources towards sexual signalling. Here we tested whether adult male black field crickets (Teleogryllus commodus) modify the extent of their calling effort (the sexually selected trait) in response to successful and unsuccessful matings with females. To examine the effect that mating interactions with females have on investment into sexual signalling, we monitored male calling effort after maturation and then provided males with a female at two points within their life, manipulating whether or not males were able to successfully mate each time. Our results demonstrate that males alter their investment towards sexual signalling in response to successful matings, but only if the experience occurs early their life. Males that mated early in their life decreased their calling effort sooner than males that were denied a mating. Our results demonstrate that social feedback in the form of successful and unsuccessful matings has the potential to alter the effort a male places in sexual signalling.

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Rapid courtship evolution in grouse (Tetraonidae): contrasting patterns of acceleration between the Eurasian and North American polygynous clades

Proceedings of The Royal Society B Biological Sciences ◽

10.1098/rspb.2006.0390 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 274 (1613) ◽

pp. 1079-1086 ◽

Cited By ~ 9

Author(s):

Allen Spaulding

Keyword(s):

Sexual Selection ◽

Mating Success ◽

Male Mating ◽

Sexually Dimorphic ◽

Sexually Selected Traits ◽

Species Pairs ◽

Rapid Divergence ◽

Nucleotide Divergence ◽

Selected Traits ◽

Dimorphic Species

Sexual selection is thought to be a powerful diversifying force, based on large ornamental differences between sexually dimorphic species. This assumes that unornamented phenotypes represent evolution without sexual selection. If sexual selection is more powerful than other forms of selection, then two effects would be: rapid divergence of sexually selected traits and a correlation between these divergence rates and variance in mating success in the ornamented sex. I tested for these effects in grouse (Tetraonidae). For three species pairs, within and among polygynous clades, male courtship characters had significantly greater divergence than other characters. This was most pronounced for two species in Tympanuchus . In the Eurasian polygynous clade, relative courtship divergence gradually increased with nucleotide divergence, suggesting a less dramatic acceleration. Increase in relative courtship divergence was associated with mating systems having higher variance in male mating success. These results suggest that sexual selection has accelerated courtship evolution among grouse, although the microevolutionary details appear to vary among clades.

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Female preference for multi-modal courtship: multiple signals are important for male mating success in peacock spiders

Proceedings of The Royal Society B Biological Sciences ◽

10.1098/rspb.2015.2222 ◽

2015 ◽

Vol 282 (1820) ◽

pp. 20152222 ◽

Cited By ~ 37

Author(s):

Madeline B. Girard ◽

Damian O. Elias ◽

Michael M. Kasumovic

Keyword(s):

Sexual Selection ◽

Mating Success ◽

Female Preference ◽

Male Mating ◽

Sexually Dimorphic ◽

Complex Signals ◽

Sexually Selected Traits ◽

Redundant Signal ◽

Multiple Messages ◽

Selected Traits

A long-standing goal for biologists has been to understand how female preferences operate in systems where males have evolved numerous sexually selected traits. Jumping spiders of the Maratus genus are exceptionally sexually dimorphic in appearance and signalling behaviour. Presumably, strong sexual selection by females has played an important role in the evolution of complex signals displayed by males of this group; however, this has not yet been demonstrated. In fact, despite apparent widespread examples of sexual selection in nature, empirical evidence is relatively sparse, especially for species employing multiple modalities for intersexual communication. In order to elucidate whether female preference can explain the evolution of multi-modal signalling traits, we ran a series of mating trials using Maratus volans . We used video recordings and laser vibrometry to characterize, quantify and examine which male courtship traits predict various metrics of mating success. We found evidence for strong sexual selection on males in this system, with success contingent upon a combination of visual and vibratory displays. Additionally, independently produced, yet correlated suites of multi-modal male signals are linked to other aspects of female peacock spider behaviour. Lastly, our data provide some support for both the redundant signal and multiple messages hypotheses for the evolution of multi-modal signalling.

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