Does good food make male mice sexy? The influence of diet on male sexually selected traits

Abstract

Diet may have an important influence on life history and behavioral traits involved in sexual selection. Males of high condition should be better able to bear the costs of high trait expression and hence express more elaborate sexual signals. Here, we follow Mus musculus domesticus raised in semi-natural conditions across four generations of standard (SQ) versus high quality (HQ) food, containing a higher energy level and manufactured to boost body condition during reproduction. We investigate multivariate effects on life history, pre- and post-copulatory traits of males. In addition, we investigate the effects of a food switch in the third generation on trait expression. From the F3 generation on, HQ males were more dominant. This resulted in HQ males being preferred in mate choice even though no post-copulatory traits were affected, suggesting a condition-dependent allocation to different traits. Sons of food switched males showed reduced pre- but not post-copulatory trait expression, irrespective of the direction of the food switch, indicating a mismatch rather than adaptive plastic adjustments in the first generation. We conclude that males balance investment into different traits based on the diet to achieve similar fitness. Furthermore, we show that adaptive shifts in male reproductive strategies need several generations to emerge while first responses to changing environments reflect a constrained trait expression.

Personality development in wild house mice: Evidence for a nutrition-dependent sensitive period early in life

“…In contrast, nutritional enrichment appears to promote higher investment into sexual signaling in various species (Buchanan et al, 2022;Porwal et al, 2023). At present we still lack a clear understanding of how exactly nutrition shapes the development of animal personality (Langenhof & Komdeur, 2018;.…”

Is the speed of adjusting to environmental change condition dependent? An experiment with house mice (Mus musculus)

“…According to the silver-spoon hypothesis ( Grafen 1990 ; Lindström 1999 ), good environmental conditions can have life-long positive effects on behavior, physiology, reproduction (e.g., litter- or clutch sizes), survival, and growth ( Batzli 1986 ; Selman and Houston 1996 ; Reynolds et al 2003 ; Jackson and Van Aarde 2004 ). In our experiment, animals in the HQ environment are in better condition ( Porwal et al 2023 ) and have more energy available. Therefore, we would expect animals either born in an HQ environment or exposed to HQ conditions to express higher flexibility after an environmental change, potentially demonstrating more pronounced or faster reactions than SQ animals (i.e., condition-dependent flexibility).…”

“…A recent mathematical model for example suggests a general overshoot phenotype, that is, a phenotypic expression that is far away and/ or in an opposite direction from the optimum, to be likely when the environmental change is too strong for parental effects to produce optimal phenotypes ( Hoyle and Ezard 2012 ). Taken together, we here aim to answer whether 1) adult mice can adjust behavior flexibly within one month after a switch of food type, 2) how such a food-switch affects reproduction and survival within the month directly after the food-switch, 3) how personality, growth, and reproduction of first-generation offspring are affected by a food-switch, and 4) whether the strength or speed of adjustment depends on the food quality regime, that is, on body condition (see Porwal et al 2023 ).…”