Male Mating History in Antheraea mylitta and its Effect on Ejaculation Size and Female Reproductive Fitness

Abstract

Reproductive activity in the economically important insect, Antheraea mylitta is very important because the female reproduces only once in her life time and the aging is very rapid and costly. It is a capital breeder and strictly a monoandrous species. To know how strategically the insect behaves and the male allocates its ejaculate resource more prudently during its successive mating with virgin females to maximize its own fitness and the fitness of the female with whom it mated, both being most important to sericulture industry. So, the present study was undertaken and the results revealed fresh and virgin females always prefer to mate with fresh virgin males (84%) and receives high dose of ejaculates leading to higher hatchability than to virgin males of one day old (13.7%) and one day old males with mating experience (2.3%). The ejaculation size (as referred to eupyrene sperm count in the ejaculation) declined significantly over successive mating (r = −0.9931, P < 0.001), so also the male body weight (r = −0.9560, P < 0.001). The quantity of ejaculate passed to female also dramatically declined during aging (r = −0.9982, P < 0.001). It was found that male weight contribute substantially to the quantum of ejaculate (r = −0.9519, P < 0.001), so also higher fecund females receive relatively more ejaculate than the lower group to reach higher reproductive fitness. The life time fecundity was found to be 334 ± 31.