Balfour, Vicki L. and Armand, Melissa and Shuker, David M. (2024) Is mating failure caused by cryptic male choice in the seed bug Lygaeus simulans? ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION, 14 (9): e70341. ISSN 2045-7758
Full text not available from this repository. (Request a copy)Abstract
One yet unresolved question in the study of mating system evolution is the occurrence of mating failure, when individuals go through their lives without successfully mating. This includes the failure to produce offspring even following copulation, for instance due to insemination or fertilisation failure. Copulations are costly in a variety of ways, but also a fundamental route to fitness in sexual species, and so we should expect that engaging in copulations that generate no offspring should be strongly selected against. Nonetheless, it has become apparent that mating failure is quite common in nature. Here we consider post-copulatory sexual selection in Lygaeus simulans seed bugs to test the hypothesis that the high levels of mating failure found in this species (approximately 40%-60%) are caused by cryptic male choice (i.e. males choosing not to inseminate a female during copulation). In our first experiment, we found that mating failure depended on female size, but not male size, with smaller females experiencing mating failure more frequently. Mechanistically this is likely to be due to copulation duration, as shorter copulations were more likely to lead to mating failure. Likewise, copulations with smaller females were shorter. In our second and third experiments, rates of mating failure decreased when pairs were allowed to repeatedly interact with the same partner over longer durations (hours through to days), implying that mating failure is not primarily caused by infertility or chronic mechanical failure. Instead, our results strongly suggest cryptic male choice as the cause of mating failure in this species.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | SPERM COMPETITION; SEXUAL SELECTION; INTRASPECIFIC VARIATION; COPULATION DURATION; EJACULATE SIZE; BODY-SIZE; HETEROPTERA; INSECTS; FECUNDITY; FEMALES; cryptic male choice; Lygaeus simulans; mate choice; mating failure; post-copulatory sexual selection; sperm competition |
| Subjects: | 500 Science > 590 Zoological sciences |
| Divisions: | Biology, Preclinical Medicine > Institut für Zoologie > Zoologie/Evolutionsbiologie (Prof. Dr. Jürgen Heinze) |
| Depositing User: | Dr. Gernot Deinzer |
| Date Deposited: | 02 Dec 2025 08:50 |
| Last Modified: | 02 Dec 2025 08:50 |
| URI: | https://pred.uni-regensburg.de/id/eprint/64531 |
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