TY  - JOUR
AB  - In species with high male mating effort, there is a trade-off between mating effort spent in a current mating and resources left for future matings. Males are therefore expected to allocate resources prudently across successive matings. Attractive males that will have a high mating success might therefore be forced to decrease mating investment in comparison to less attractive males. Furthermore, if there is genetic variation in attractiveness, one might expect to find a negative genetic correlation between attractiveness and mating investment. Here this genetic prediction is tested using the scorpionfly Panorpa cognata (Insecta: Mecoptera). In this species males offer costly salivary secretions as nuptial gifts to females. By producing large secretions males increase copulation duration and sperm transfer, thus gaining an advantage in sperm competition. I used a full-sib breeding design and found that both attractiveness and mating investment showed considerable heritability. Most importantly, there was a significant negative genetic correlation between attractiveness and mating investment: in families with attractive individuals, males produced smaller salivary secretions than in families with less attractive males. The results thus demonstrate an important evolutionary trade-off between mating success and sperm competition success.
DA  - 2011
DO  - 10.1093/beheco/arq211
KW  - sperm competition
KW  - life history trade-offs
KW  - Panorpa
KW  - alternative mating strategies
KW  - nuptial gifts
KW  - sexual selection
LA  - eng
IS  - 2
M2  - 345
PY  - 2011
SN  - 1045-2249
SP  - 345-349
T2  - Behavioral Ecology
TI  - Male attractiveness is negatively genetically associated with investment in copulations
UR  - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:0070-pub-23956928
Y2  - 2024-12-26T20:04:27
ER  -