Mating effort and female receptivity: how do male guppies decide when to invest in sex?

Guevara-Fiore, Palestina; Stapley, Jessica; Watt, Penelope J.

doi:10.1007/s00265-010-0980-6

Cited by 36 publications

(26 citation statements)

References 63 publications

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“…The guppy system therefore meets several of the aforementioned conditions that favor the evolution of male mate choice. More specifically, in natural populations, individuals live in mixed-sex shoals wherein males encounter females simultaneously (Houde 1997;, adult females vary widely in quality (e.g., in body size, fecundity, and reproductive state/sexual receptivity; Reznick and Endler 1982;Houde 1997;Kelly et al 1999;Herdman et al 2004;Ojanguren and Magurran 2004), males experience intense mating and sperm competition (Kelly et al 1999;Neff et al 2008;, male mating effort is costly and highly plastic (e.g., Houde 1997;Ojanguren and Magurran 2004;Guevara-Fiore et al 2010a;Head et al 2010;, females prefer males that exhibit high courtship rates (Houde 1997;Kodric-Brown and Nicoletto 2001), and the production of sperm ejaculates is rate limited (Pilastro and Bisazza 1999).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Covariation and repeatability of male mating effort and mating preferences in a promiscuous fish

Godin

Auld

2013

Ecology and Evolution

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Although mate choice by males does occur in nature, our understanding of its importance in driving evolutionary change remains limited compared with that for female mate choice. Recent theoretical models have shown that the evolution of male mate choice is more likely when individual variation in male mating effort and mating preferences exist and positively covary within populations. However, relatively little is known about the nature of such variation and its maintenance within natural populations. Here, using the Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata) as a model study system, we report that mating effort and mating preferences in males, based on female body length (a strong correlate of fecundity), positively covary and are significantly variable among subjects. Individual males are thus consistent, but not unanimous, in their mate choice. Both individual mating effort (including courtship effort) and mating preference were significantly repeatable. These novel findings support the assumptions and predictions of recent evolutionary models of male mate choice, and are consistent with the presence of additive genetic variation for male mate choice based on female size in our study population and thus with the opportunity for selection and further evolution of large female body size through male mate choice.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Covariation and repeatability of male mating effort and mating preferences in a promiscuous fish

Godin

Auld

2013

Ecology and Evolution

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“…Male preferences for larger or more fecund females have been found in moths (Xu and Wang 2009), newts (Verrell 1985) finches (Jones et al 2001), Drosophila melanogaster (Byrne and Rice 2006), and many other groups (review; Bonduriansky 2001). Males may also prefer to mate with females based on other traits, such as female coloration (Amundsen and Forsgren 2001), mating status (Guevara‐Fiore et al 2010), pheromonal signature (Andrade and Kasumovic 2005), or likelihood of successful insemination (Preston et al 2003).…”

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confidence: 99%

Recent Social History Alters Male Courtship Preferences

Jordan

Brooks

2011

Evolution

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“…Since pursuing and courting females may result in significant energetic costs [23,24], and males cannot simultaneously court two different females, it can be expected that male guppies exhibit some degree of choosiness. Indeed, males have been shown to prefer receptive [4], larger [25] and unfamiliar females [26] as mates.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Do unattractive friends make you look better? Context-dependent male mating preferences in the guppy

2013

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Recent theory predicts that in species where females tend to mate with the relatively most ornamented males, males may increase their attractiveness to females, and hence mating success, by preferentially associating with females that are surrounded by less ornamented competitors. Despite this prediction, we still lack explicit experimental evidence that males strategically prefer females surrounded by less attractive competitors to maximize their relative attractiveness. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive test of this hypothesis in the guppy (Poecilia reticulata), a species where a female's perception of a male's attractiveness depends on his coloration relative to that of surrounding males. We found that males preferentially associated with females that were surrounded by relatively drab competitors, and that the strength of an individual male's preference was negatively correlated with his level of ornamentation. A series of control experiments made it possible to exclude the potentially confounding effects of male-male competition or social motivations when drawing these conclusions. The ability of males to choose social context to increase their relative attractiveness has important evolutionary consequences, for example, by contributing towards the maintenance of variability in male sexual ornamentation despite the strong directional selection exerted by female preferences.

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Mating effort and female receptivity: how do male guppies decide when to invest in sex?

Cited by 36 publications

References 63 publications

Covariation and repeatability of male mating effort and mating preferences in a promiscuous fish

Covariation and repeatability of male mating effort and mating preferences in a promiscuous fish

Recent Social History Alters Male Courtship Preferences

Do unattractive friends make you look better? Context-dependent male mating preferences in the guppy

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