Does mating experience of male house crickets affect their behavior to subsequent females and female choice?
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Does mating experience of male house crickets affect their behavior to subsequent females and female choice? Paweł Ręk
Received: 10 June 2012 / Revised: 30 July 2012 / Accepted: 13 September 2012 / Published online: 23 September 2012 # The Author(s) 2012. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
Abstract Male mating experience was shown to play an important role in settling conflicts between males; however, little is known about whether and how prior access to females influences male behavior during intersexual interactions and female choice itself. Here, I experimentally test this relationship in the house cricket (Acheta domesticus) by combining one-on-one interaction between the male and female with direct comparison of males by the female, but precluding aggression between males. I found that solitary males were more active during subsequent courtship displays than paired males, suggesting the detrimental effect of mating on courtship performance. At the same time, females spent significantly more time close to solitary males or playbacks of male's natural courtship songs, and responded positively to the condition of males, ignoring body size of males. In contrast, females responded similarly to computer-modified playbacks of courtship songs of solitary and paired males with standardized rate of phrases and amplitudes; however, when females were additionally allowed to contact with anesthetized males they spent more time close to bigger males, irrespective of the acoustic parameters of courtship songs. These results show that although females were able to differentiate between many behavioral and morphological characteristics of males, including voluntary and intrinsic ones, they preferred traits conditional upon the costliness of male's displays. In addition, mating experience appeared to be a crucial factor in the choice of a particular costly mating strategy by males.
Communicated by D. Gwynne P. Ręk (*) Department of Behavioural Ecology, Institute of Environmental Biology, Faculty of Biology, Adam Mickiewicz University, Umultowska 89, 61-614 Poznań, Poland e-mail: [email protected]
Keywords Mating experience . Female choice . Resource value . Courtship song . Acheta domesticus
Introduction The idea that decision-making is mediated through motivation has long history in behavioral research (Lorenz 1950; Bindra 1978; Hogan 1997; Anselme 2007). Motivation is generated by the objective value of the resource (Maynard Smith 1982; Enquist 1985; Barlow et al. 1986; Enquist and Leimar 1987; Riechert 1998; Hurd 2006; Baker and Maner 2008; Bergman et al. 2010) as well as by the level of deficiency (Nosil 2002; Chancellor and Isbell 2008), i.e., the positive or negative experience with the factor. It is widely accepted that motivation makes a connection between individual's needs and the actions that are aimed at fulfilling them (Elwood et al. 1998; Grouzet et al. 2004; Anselme 2007). Also, asymmetry in motivation, except for resource holding potential (RHP) and intrinsic aggressiv
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