The complex interplay between macronutrient intake, cuticular hydrocarbon expression and mating success in male decorated crickets

Rapkin, James; Jensen, Kristoffer; House, Clarissa M.; Sakaluk, Scott K.; Sakaluk, John Kitchener; Hunt, John

doi:10.1111/jeb.13036

Cited by 20 publications

(18 citation statements)

References 114 publications

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“…Both protein and carbohydrate intakes had a positive effect on CHCs (Table 1 and Table S2; PC1), supporting previous findings that CHC expression is a costly trait and relies on high caloric intake (Rapkin et al, 2016). However, protein consumption exerted a greater effect than carbohydrate on all the CHC PCs analysed in male T. oceanicus (Table 1).…”

Section: The Nutritional Geometry Of Life-history Traitssupporting

confidence: 86%

Macronutrients and micronutrients drive trade‐offs between male pre‐ and postmating sexual traits

Simpson

Simmons

2018

Functional Ecology

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Nutrition fundamentally affects life span and reproduction, and identifying how nutrient intakes are linked to the expression of these life‐history traits can advance understanding of the mechanisms underlying life‐history trade‐offs. Males are thought to face trade‐offs between the allocation of resources to premating secondary sexual traits for gaining access to females and allocation to postmating traits such as ejaculate quality that affects their fertility. We used the Geometric Framework for nutrition to examine the effects of macronutrient and micronutrient consumption on life span and the expression of pre‐ and postmating sexual traits in male field crickets Teleogryllus oceanicus. We found that life span was maximized on diets with a low protein‐to‐carbohydrate (P:C) ratio, whereas premating sexual traits (courtship song and cuticular hydrocarbons) were maximized on high P:C ratios. In contrast, sperm viability, a postmating trait, was lowest on high‐P:C‐ratio diets. Higher consumption of micronutrients (minerals and vitamins) was associated with decreased life span and lower relative abundances of longer chained CHCs, but improved the performance of sperm viability and courtship song. We show that different macronutrients are not simply calories to be allocated to different traits, but directly determine the expression of different life‐history traits and mediate their trade‐offs. In this study, we also provide evidence that micronutrients influenced the expression of life‐history traits, emphasizing the value of including micronutrients in experiments using nutritional geometry. A http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1365-2435.13190/suppinfo is available for this article.

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Section: The Nutritional Geometry Of Life-history Traitssupporting

confidence: 86%

Macronutrients and micronutrients drive trade‐offs between male pre‐ and postmating sexual traits

Simpson

Simmons

2018

Functional Ecology

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“…Taken together, our results indicate that CHCs are a costly trait in O. taurus , and that the costs of increased expression are greater for low‐quality individuals, particularly in environments with limited food resources. How total CHC production influences attractiveness is not yet known for O. taurus , but results for the decorated cricket, G. sigillatus , indicate that increased CHC production can increase the attractiveness of males (Rapkin et al ., ). Further work is required to test if/how differences in CHC abundance influence attractiveness in O. taurus .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 97%

“…Despite the attention CHCs have received in studies of sexual selection, manipulative experiments testing for condition dependence are more limited. CHCs respond to manipulations of diet composition (Liang & Silverman, ; Otte et al ., ; Rapkin et al ., ; Ng et al ., ) including diets of varying quality that presumably alter condition (Delcourt & Rundle, ; Gosden & Chenoweth, ; Weddle et al ., ). The response of CHCs to diets of different composition/quality can potentially reflect condition‐dependent responses, and effects that are independent of condition.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…To isolate changes in CHCs that reflect variation in condition therefore requires a diet restriction or dilution treatment, which directly manipulates the pool of resources available to an individual. This protocol has revealed condition dependence of male CHCs in the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster (Bonduriansky et al ., ), the decorated cricket Gryllodes sigillatus (Rapkin et al ., ) and the Australian field cricket, Teleogryllus oceanicus (Ng et al ., ). It remains an open question as to whether CHCs are condition‐dependent across a broader range of taxa.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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A costly chemical trait: phenotypic condition dependence of cuticular hydrocarbons in a dung beetle

Berson

Simmons

2018

J of Evolutionary Biology

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Chemical traits are increasingly recognized as important cues used in mate choice. For example, the cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs) of insects have been shown to influence mating success in a range of taxa. Less is known, however, about how CHCs are expressed in proportion to an individual's condition, and consequently whether CHCs can function as condition-dependent signals of quality. We investigated this question using the dung beetle, Onthophagus taurus. CHCs are subject to sexual selection in this species through mate choice. A dietary manipulation revealed condition dependence of CHC expression for both sexes: dietary restriction decreased overall CHC production and altered the composition of CHCs. Furthermore, CHC production was associated with a measure of condition in beetles fed a limited diet but not those fed ad libitum. These results implicate a resource cost to CHC production that is likely to result in trade-offs with other fitness components in this species, as these respond similarly to a dietary restriction. The CHC profiles showed sexual dimorphism: males produced more CHCs and the sexes differed in the blend of compounds they produced. There was evidence for a male dimorphism in the CHC profile, in line with the presence of the alternative reproductive tactics (minor sneaks and major fighters) in this species. However, rather than mimicking a female CHC profile, minor males differed more from females than major males. Our results suggest that CHCs are a costly trait in O. taurus that has the potential to act as a condition-dependent signal of quality.

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“…It is likely, for example, that both sexes prefer mates in high condition (Salehialavi et al ., ) and that high phenotypic condition is revealed by a particular EC profile in both sexes (Johansson & Jones, ). The condition dependence of ECs in one or both sexes is known from several insect taxa, and heightened condition dependence has been linked to sexual selection on male ECs in decorated crickets (Weddle et al ., ; Rapkin et al ., ), cockroaches (South et al ., ), burying beetles (Chemnitz et al ., ) and Drosophila serrata (Delcourt & Rundle, ; Gosden & Chenoweth, ). In contrast, female attractiveness was not affected by diet treatments mediating condition dependence of female ECs in Drosophila melanogaster (Fedina et al ., ).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sexual dimorphism in epicuticular compounds despite similar sexual selection in sex role‐reversed seed beetles

Booksmythe

Rundle

Arnqvist

2017

J of Evolutionary Biology

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Sexual selection imposed by mating preferences is often implicated in the evolution of both sexual dimorphism and divergence between species in signalling traits. Epicuticular compounds (ECs) are important signalling traits in insects and show extensive variability among and within taxa. Here, we investigate whether variation in the multivariate EC profiles of two sex role-reversed beetle species, Megabruchidius dorsalis and Megabruchidius tonkineus, predicts mate attractiveness and mating success in males and females. The two species had highly distinct EC profiles and both showed significant sexual dimorphism in ECs. Age and mating status in both species were also distinguishable by EC profile. Males and females of both species showed significant association between their EC profile and attractiveness, measured both as latency to mating and as success in mate-choice trials. Remarkably, the major multivariate vector describing attractiveness was correlated in both species, both sexes, and in both choice and no-choice experiments such that increased attractiveness was in all cases associated with a similar multivariate modification of EC composition. Furthermore, in both sexes this vector of attractiveness was associated with more male-like EC profiles, as well as those characterizing younger and nonvirgin individuals, which might reflect a general preference for individuals of high condition in both sexes. Despite significant sexual selection on EC composition, however, we found no support for the proposition that sexual selection is responsible for divergence in ECs between these species.

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The complex interplay between macronutrient intake, cuticular hydrocarbon expression and mating success in male decorated crickets

Cited by 20 publications

References 114 publications

Macronutrients and micronutrients drive trade‐offs between male pre‐ and postmating sexual traits

Macronutrients and micronutrients drive trade‐offs between male pre‐ and postmating sexual traits

A costly chemical trait: phenotypic condition dependence of cuticular hydrocarbons in a dung beetle

Sexual dimorphism in epicuticular compounds despite similar sexual selection in sex role‐reversed seed beetles

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