TY  - JOUR
A1  - Ziege, Madlen
A1  - Mahlow, Kristin
A1  - Hennige-Schulz, Carmen
A1  - Kronmarck, Claudia
A1  - Tiedemann, Ralph
A1  - Streit, Bruno
A1  - Plath, Martin
T1  - Audience effects in the Atlantic molly (Poecilia mexicana)-prudent male mate choice in response to perceived sperm competition risk?
T2  - Frontiers in zoology, 6.2009, article 17
N2  - Background Multidirectional interactions in social (or communication) networks can have a profound effect on mate choice behavior. For example, Poecilia mexicana males show weaker expression of mating preferences when being observed by an audience male. It was suggested that this behavior is an adaptation to reduce sperm competition risk, which arises because commonly preferred female phenotypes will receive attention also by surrounding males, and/or because the audience male can copy the focal male's mate choice. Do P. mexicana males indeed respond to perceived sperm competition risk? We gave males a choice between two females and repeated the tests under one of the following conditions: (1) during the 2nd part of the tests an empty transparent cylinder was presented (control); (2) an audience male inside the cylinder observed the focal male throughout the 2nd part, or (3) the audience male was presented only before the tests, but could not eavesdrop during the actual choice tests (non-specific sperm competition risk treatments); (4) the focal male could see a rival male sexually interacting with the previously preferred, or (5) with the non-preferred female before the 2nd part of the tests (specific sperm competition risk treatments). Results When comparing the strength of individual male preferences between the 1st and 2nd part of the tests (before and after presentation of an audience), male preferences declined slightly also during the control treatment (1). However, the decrease in strength of male preferences was more than two-fold stronger in audience treatment (2), i.e., with non-specific sperm competition risk including the possibility for visual eavesdropping by the audience male. No audience effect was found in treatments (3) and (5), but a weak effect was also seen when the focal male had seen the previously preferred female sexually interact with a rival male (treatment 4; specific sperm competition risk). Conclusions When comparing the two 'non-specific sperm competition risk' treatments (2 and 3), a very strong effect was found only when the audience male could actually observe the focal male during mate choice in treatment (2). This suggests that focal males indeed attempt to conceal their mating preferences in the visual presence of other males so as to avoid mate choice copying. When there is no potential for eavesdropping [treatment (3)], non-specific specific sperm competition risk seems to play a minor or no role. Congruent with studies on other poeciliid species, our results also show that P. mexicana males respond to perceived specific sperm competition risk, and tend to share their mating effort more equally among females when the resource value of their previously preferred mate decreases (after mating with a rival male). However, this effect is comparatively weak.
Y1  - 2009
UR  - http://publikationen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/7049
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30-60619
UR  - http://www.frontiersinzoology.com/content/6/1/17
SN  - 1742-9994
N1  - © 2009 Ziege et al. , licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
VL  - 6
IS  - 17
SP  - 1
EP  - 8
PB  - BioMed Central
CY  - London
ER  -