Abstract
Male Madagascar hissing cockroaches, Gromphadorhina portentosa, engage in agonistic contests with other males and produce audible sounds or 'hisses' during these interactions. Hisses are used to maintain, rather than to establish, social relationships among males. The agonistic hisses of males are variable and could be used as signals to communicate size or competitive ability of an individual. In this study we examined how size influences male-male competition, as well as the genetic variation and covariation of male body size and components of the agonistic hiss. We found that male size affected the outcome of agonistic interactions between pairs of males: a male that dominated in a pair was significantly larger than the male that was subordinate. However, we found no differences in the hisses produced by dominant and subordinate males after controlling for male weight. We estimated heritabilities, evolvability and genetic correlations for male size and characteristics of the hiss from a full-sib analysis of brothers. The patterns of heritabilities and evolvabilities were very similar. The heritabilities of both male weight and duration of the hiss were significantly greater than zero. There was a significant positive genetic correlation between duration of the agonistic hiss and male weight, and a significant negative genetic correlation between hiss duration and the beginning dominant frequency. There was also a positive phenotypic correlation and a negative environmental correlation between male weight and hiss duration. Thus, hiss duration can signal the present influence of the environment on male size, whereas information from hiss duration and beginning dominant frequency can signal the male's ability to transmit genetic influence for size. Our results are discussed in terms of honest signalling and assessment during male-male and courtship interactions.
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Acknowledgements
We thank Deidra Beshear, William Wallin and Ed Owen for care of the insects used in this study. Deidra Beshear, Butch Brodie, John Clark, Sandy DeBano, Dan Potter, William Wallin and an anonymous reviewer provided helpful discussions or comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript. We appreciate the financial support of this research by NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Grant IBN-9311109, NSF-KY EPSCoR Grant EHR-9108764 for summer research funds, Sigma Xi Grant-in-Aid of Research (to D.C.C.) and NSF Grants BSR-9022012 and DEB-9107078, University of Kentucky Research Committee Grant, State and Federal Hatch funds, and funds provided by the Vice Chancellor for Research and Graduate Studies (to AJM). KAES publication number 94-7-231.
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Clark, D., Moore, A. Genetic aspects of communication during male-male competition in the Madagascar hissing cockroach: honest signalling of size. Heredity 75, 198–205 (1995). https://doi.org/10.1038/hdy.1995.124
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/hdy.1995.124
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