Condition‐dependent male copulatory courtship and its benefits for females

Abstract

Sexual selection is responsible for the development of highly elaborated traits, known as secondary sexual characters (SSCs) (Andersson, 1994;Cotton et al., 2006; Darwin, 1871). These SSCs are used during courtship to persuade and stimulate females to mate using visual, auditory, tactile, and/or chemical signals (Andersson, 1994;Eberhard, 1996;Mitoyen et al., 2019). Theory indicates that these SSCs are used by females as indicators of male quality (Cotton et al., 2004;Grafen, 1990;Zahavi, 1975). The fundamental idea is that the cost of producing and maintaining SSCs depends directly on the condition of males, which can be defined as

Copulatory courtship, body temperature and infection in Tenebrio molitor

“…A recent paper supported this idea: females that copulated with infected males whose temperature exceeded 24˚C ended up with an impaired fitness via a reduction in the number of eggs laid [14]. The authors of this work suggest that a higher performance in copulatory courtship of sick males leads to an increase in their body temperature [14,23]. Thus, our aim in this work is to assess whether females derive information of a male's sick or non-sick health status (from now on, health status) via the intensity of copulatory courtship, body temperature or both.…”

“…To record the copulatory behavior of T. molitor we followed the protocol in [23]. We placed each pair, female, and the chosen male, in a glass container (12.2 cm diameter × 16.4 cm height) with a fine layer of wheat bran.…”

“…Females of this species prefer the pheromones of sick males, yet females lay smaller eggs with lower lipid concentration and reduced hatching success after mating with these males [22]. As copulatory courtship increases (i.e., antennal contacts) in sick males, females invariably end up rearing fewer offspring compared to non-sick males [23]. Sick males use a terminal investment strategy by prioritizing more resources to increase pheromone production at the expense of survival [22].…”