Journal
JOURNAL OF INSECT PHYSIOLOGY
Volume 56, Issue 3, Pages 283-287Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.jinsphys.2009.10.014
Keywords
Cost of mating; Cost of sexual courting; Sexual signaling; Ceratitis capitata; Tephritidae
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Funding
- National Institute on Aging [P01-AG022500-01, P01-AG08761-10]
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In polygynous insect species, male reproductive success is directly related to lifetime mating success. However, the costs for males of sexual activities such as courting, signaling, and mating are largely unknown. We studied the cost of sexual activities in male Mediterranean fruit flies, Ceratitis capitata (Tephritidae), a polygynous lekking species, by keeping cohorts of individual male flies under relaxed crowding conditions in the laboratory. We used 5 cohorts among which individuals differed in their opportunities to interact with con-specifics and recorded life span, and in one treatment, mating rate. We found that males kept singly lived more than twice as long as males that interacted intensively with mature virgin females, while male-male interactions caused a smaller reduction in longevity. Because longevity of males that could court but not mate was not significantly different from those that could court and mate, we conclude that courting (not mating) was responsible for the observed longevity reduction. Moreover, we detected high variability in male mating success, when 5 virgin females were offered daily. In contrast to the cohort level, individual males that mated at a high rate lived relatively long, thus indicating heterogeneity in quality or sexual strategy among males. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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