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Context-dependent female mate choice maintains variation in male sexual activity
- The existence of individual variation in males' motivation to mate remains a conundrum as directional selection should favour high mating frequencies. Balancing selection resulting from (context-dependent) female mate choice could contribute to the maintenance of this behavioural polymorphism. In dichotomous choice tests, mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki) females preferred virtual males showing intermediate mating frequencies, reflecting females' tendencies to avoid harassment by highly sexually active males. When tested in the presence of a female shoal—which protects females from male harassment—focal females showed significantly stronger preferences for high sexual activity. A trade-off between (indirect) benefits and (direct) costs of mating with sexually active males probably explains context-dependent female mate choice, as costs depend on the social environment in which females choose their mates. No preference was observed when we tested virgin females, suggesting that the behavioural pattern described here is part of the learned behavioural repertoire of G. holbrooki females.
Author: | Carolin Sommer-TremboORCiDGND, Martin PlathORCiDGND, Jakob Gismann, Claudia Helfrich, David BierbachORCiDGND |
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URN: | urn:nbn:de:hebis:30:3-445174 |
DOI: | https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.170303 |
ISSN: | 2054-5703 |
Parent Title (German): | Royal Society open science |
Publisher: | Royal Soc. Publ. |
Place of publication: | London |
Document Type: | Article |
Language: | English |
Year of Completion: | 2017 |
Date of first Publication: | 2017/07/12 |
Publishing Institution: | Universitätsbibliothek Johann Christian Senckenberg |
Release Date: | 2017/11/06 |
Volume: | 4 |
Issue: | 170303 |
Page Number: | 8 |
Note: | Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited. |
HeBIS-PPN: | 425340481 |
Institutes: | Biowissenschaften / Biowissenschaften |
Biowissenschaften / Institut für Ökologie, Evolution und Diversität | |
Dewey Decimal Classification: | 5 Naturwissenschaften und Mathematik / 59 Tiere (Zoologie) / 590 Tiere (Zoologie) |
Licence (German): | Creative Commons - Namensnennung 4.0 |