Acoustic Experience Shapes Alternative Mating Tactics and Reproductive Investment in Male Field Crickets

Abstract

Developmental plasticity allows juvenile animals to assess environmental cues and adaptively shape behavioral and morphological traits to maximize fitness in their adult environment. Sexual signals are particularly conspicuous cues, making them likely candidates for mediating such responses. Plasticity in male reproductive traits is a common phenomenon, but empirical evidence for signal-mediated plasticity in males is lacking. We tested whether experience of acoustic sexual signals during juvenile stages influences the development of three adult traits in the continuously breeding field cricket Teleogryllus oceanicus: male mating tactics, reproductive investment, and condition. All three traits were affected by juvenile acoustic experience. Males of this species produce a long-range calling song to attract receptive females, but they can also behave as satellites by parasitizing other males' calls. Males reared in an environment mimicking a population with many calling males were less likely to exhibit satellite behavior, invested more in reproductive tissues, and attained higher condition than males reared in a silent environment. These results contrast with other studies and demonstrate how the effects of juvenile social experience on adult male morphology, reproductive investment, and behavior may subsequently influence sexual selection and phenotypic evolution.

Socially flexible female choice differs among populations of the Pacific field cricket: geographical variation in the interaction coefficient psi (Ψ)

“…First, the dramatic reversal in the sign of C in the Contemporary versus Ancestral Kauai population corroborates evidence of its evolvability provided by an artificial selection study in Drosophila serrata [16]. In that study, a similar reversal in C was documented for social influences on the expression of a cuticular hydrocarbon, 2MeC 26 , after 16 generations of experimental evolution. In T. oceanicus, the Ancestral Kauai population showed a strong negative C, such that acoustic experience made females less choosy.…”

“…Song females were reared in a Precision 818 incubator in which male calling song was played back to simulate a high density of sexually signalling males. The protocol was identical to previous studies that successfully manipulated the acoustic environment in this species [21,24,26]. Briefly, male song was broadcast using sony SRS-m30 speakers at 80-85 dB measured at the lid of the females' containers, which yielded an intensity of approximately 70-75 dB inside the containers.…”

Indirect genetic effects in behavioral ecology: does behavior play a special role in evolution?

“…The first is that IGEs might provide an evolutionary genetic mechanism for the prediction that such traits are labile in varying social environments, which has been confirmed in numerous phenotypic studies on learning and mating behavior (Dukas 2005;Boughman 2008, 2009;Bailey et al 2010;Bailey 2011;Rebar et al 2011Auld et al 2016;Rebar and Rodríguez 2016). Thus, IGEs allow the flexibility we see in social behavior to be consistent with standard evolutionary theory.…”

Female mate choice plasticity is affected by the interaction between male density and female age in a field cricket

“…Indeed, adult field crickets show behavioural differences based upon the male calling environments that they experienced recently (Bailey & Macleod, 2014;Bailey & Zuk, 2008, 2009) and as juveniles (Bailey, Gray, & Zuk, 2010;DiRienzo, Pruitt, & Hedrick, 2012;Kasumovic, 2013;Kasumovic, Hall, & Brooks, 2012). Specifically, female field crickets have repeatedly been shown to express stronger responses to male calls following exposure to less variable calls (Kasumovic et al, 2012), less preferred calls (Bailey & Zuk, 2009), or silence (Bailey & Macleod, 2014;Bailey & Zuk, 2008).…”