Subsocial Cockroaches Nauphoeta cinerea Mate Indiscriminately with Kin Despite High Costs of Inbreeding

Abstract

Many animals have evolved strategies to reduce risks of inbreeding and its deleterious effects on the progeny. In social arthropods, such as the eusocial ants and bees, inbreeding avoidance is typically achieved by the dispersal of breeders from their native colony. However studies in presocial insects suggest that kin discrimination during mate choice may be a more common mechanism in socially simpler species with no reproductive division of labour. Here we examined this possibility in the subsocial cockroach Nauphoeta cinerea, a model species for research in sexual selection, where males establish dominance hierarchies to access females and control breeding territories. When given a binary choice between a sibling male and a non-sibling male that had the opportunity to establish a hierarchy prior to the tests, females mated preferentially with the dominant male, irrespective of kinship or body size. Despite the lack of kin discrimination during mate choice, inbred-mated females incurred significant fitness costs, producing 20% less offspring than outbred-mated females. We discuss how the social mating system of this territorial cockroach may naturally limit the probability of siblings to encounter and reproduce, without the need for evolving active inbreeding avoidance mechanisms, such as kin recognition.

An investigation of demographic and component Allee effects in the Madagascar hissing cockroach

“…The variety of social systems within this group (Lihoreau et al 2012) allows for an exploration of behaviour-population connections within one order, the Blattodea (Inward et al 2007). For example, Blattella germanica, a socially aggregating species, exhibits kin discrimination in mating, but the subsocial species Nauphoeta cinerea does not (Bouchebti et al 2016). This behaviour may then affect population dynamics as inbred-mated N. cinerea females produce 20% less offspring than outbred-mated females do (Bouchebti et al 2016).…”

“…For example, Blattella germanica, a socially aggregating species, exhibits kin discrimination in mating, but the subsocial species Nauphoeta cinerea does not (Bouchebti et al 2016). This behaviour may then affect population dynamics as inbred-mated N. cinerea females produce 20% less offspring than outbred-mated females do (Bouchebti et al 2016). Lihoreau and Rivault (2008) reported that nymphs of B. germanica develop faster in the presence of conspecifics, whereas nymphs of nonaggregating cockroach species did not show benefits from conspecifics.…”

Lifetime inbreeding depression in a leaf beetle

“…Family-specific cuticular hydrocarbon (CHC) (Lihoreau & Rivault, 2009) or pheromone patterns (Herzner, Schmitt, Heckel, Schreier, & Strohm, 2006) partly serve as recognition cues on which inbreeding avoidance mechanisms are based on (Lihoreau & Rivault, 2009;Thomas & Simmons, 2011). However, pre-or postcopulatory kin discrimination as inbreeding avoidance mechanisms is not necessarily expressed in all species suffering from inbreeding depression (Bouchebti, Durier, Pasquaretta, Rivault, & Lihoreau, 2016;Edvardsson, Rodriguez-Munoz, & Tregenza, 2008). As alternative or in combination, the costs of inbreeding can be reduced by a polyandrous mating system (Bayoumy, Michaud, & Bain, 2015;Duthie, Bocedi, & Reid, 2016;Tregenza & Wedell, 2002).…”

The complete mitochondrial genome of the subsocial cockroachNauphoeta cinereaand phylogenomic analyses of Blattodea mitogenomes suggest reclassification of superfamilies

“…It is a Blaberidae, ovoviviparous cockroach. N. cinerea is a model species for sexual selection (Bouchebti et al 2016) and correlations between metabolic rate and fitness studies (Schimpf et al 2012). The sample sequenced here was obtained from a Brazilian enterprise that sells N. cinerea specimens for reptile feeding, though the providers could not specify the precise location on which the original specimens were collected.…”

“…N. cinerea is a model species for sexual selection (Bouchebti et al. 2016 ) and correlations between metabolic rate and fitness studies (Schimpf et al. 2012 ).…”