Mate choice plasticity in the field cricket <Emphasis Type="Italic">Teleogryllus oceanicus</Emphasis>: effects of social experience in multiple modalities |
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Authors: | Nathan W Bailey |
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Institution: | (1) School of Biology, University of St Andrews, St Andrews, KY16 9TH, UK |
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Abstract: | Social experience can elicit phenotypically plastic changes in mate choice, but little is known about the degree to which
social information from one modality can influence mating decisions based on information from a different modality. I used
the field cricket Teleogryllus oceanicus to test whether experience of chemical cues mimicking a high density of sexually mature males causes changes in mate choice
based on acoustic signals. T. oceanicus males produce long-range calling songs to attract females for mating, but they also produce waxy, non-volatile hydrocarbons
on their cuticle (CHCs) which, when deposited on a substrate, can be detected by females and may provide demographic information.
I manipulated female experience of substrate-bound male CHCs and then performed acoustic mate choice trials. When CHCs were
present on the substrate during trials, females showed greater motivation to respond to male calling song. This effect diminished
with repeated exposure to male songs, demonstrating that the importance of olfactory cues in altering acoustic mate choice
decreased with increasing exposure to acoustic signals. However, the temporal nature of CHC experience mattered: previous
experience of CHCs did not alter subsequent female choice for male calling song traits. Exposure to male song increased the
threshold of mate acceptance over time, and individuals varied considerably in overall levels of responsiveness. Taken together,
the results demonstrate that mate choice is dependent on social context mediated by multiple modalities in T. oceanicus, but they do not support the idea that prior experience of social cues in one modality necessarily influences later mating
decisions based on other signalling modalities. |
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