Summary 1. The paper summarizes the published evidence on the relation between mating frequency and fecundity in insects. There is experimental evidence of varying quality for 63 species and non‐experimental evidence for about 60. 2. Repeated mating may be universally necessary for full fecundity and fertility in female insects (in species in which the females normally mate more than once). 3. The evidence is remarkably poor. We need more properly designed experiments (and not just observations of natural variation), with sufficient sample sizes and statistics, and measurements of the fecundities and fertilities of singly and multiply mated females, when the multiple matings are separated by many days or weeks. Most of the existing experiments of this sort are defective in some way. 4. In species with greater total fecundity and longevity, multiple mating may be more likely to enhance fertility than in species with small fecundity and short life span. 5. Females in naturally monandrous species do not show increased fecundity or fertility with repeated mating, whereas females of polyandrous species do. 6. There is no obvious connexion between paternal investment, in so far as we know about it, and the increase of fecundity by repeated mating. 7. There is a small tendency for females to breed more quickly and be shorter lived if they mate repeatedly.

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Does the presence of absence of eggs in a male stickleback's nest affect the chance that a female will spawn with him? Female threespined sticklebacks (Gasterosteus aculeatus) were presented alternatively to males with or to males without eggs. Our results show that the chance that a female will follow a male to his nest is unaffected by whether he has eggs. Once a female has reached the nest, she can either enter it and spawn, or back out and refuse. There was a tendency for females to be more likely to spawn than to refuse if the nest contained eggs. In a sequential choice experiment females that had refused a male without eggs were then presented to a second male, either with eggs or, as a control, without eggs. Females were significantly more likely to spawn with the second male if he possessed eggs. The finding that females prefer to spawn with males with eggs suggests functional explanations for female refusal, male egg kidnapping, and male 'displacement fanning'.