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No relationship between long-distance acoustic mate attraction signals and male fertility or female preference in spring field crickets

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Abstract

To father offspring, a male must succeed at two processes of sexual selection: (1) mate with a female and (2) fertilize her eggs. We investigated the relationships between pre- and post-copulatory male traits and female mating responses in wild-captured and laboratory-reared spring field crickets, Gryllus veletis. The phenotype-linked fertility hypothesis suggests that females may receive a direct benefit, enhanced fertilization efficiency, by mating with males that signal attractively. We measured fine-scale components of male acoustic mate attraction signals as well as how much time males spent signalling, measured female preference for males in mating trials and then quantified sperm number and viability. We found no relationship between male signalling traits and male fertility or female preference, providing no evidence for the phenotype-linked fertility hypothesis. We also found no difference in sperm metrics between wild-captured and laboratory-reared males. While female crickets may receive benefits by choosing males based on acoustic signal characteristics, whether the benefits are a result of genetic quality, seminal fluid contents or some other male trait remains unknown.

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Acknowledgments

We thank S. Harrison for assistance catching crickets and conducting experiments, and J. Fitzsimmons, J.-G. Godin, M. Hollahan, S. Sakaluk, A. Morin, L. Holman and two anonymous reviewers for comments on earlier versions of this manuscript. Funding was provided by a Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Canada Graduate Scholarship to L.P.F., a P.E.O. Scholar Award to L.P.F., a NSERC Discovery Grant to S.M.B., the Canadian Foundation for Innovation to S.M.B., the Ontario Research Fund to S.M.B. and Carleton University.

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  1. Department of Biology, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S2Y4, Canada

    Lauren P. Fitzsimmons & Susan M. Bertram

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  1. Lauren P. Fitzsimmons
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  2. Susan M. Bertram
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Correspondence to Lauren P. Fitzsimmons.

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Communicated by D. Gwynne

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Fitzsimmons, L.P., Bertram, S.M. No relationship between long-distance acoustic mate attraction signals and male fertility or female preference in spring field crickets. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 67, 885–893 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-013-1511-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-013-1511-z

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