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Size advantage in male–male competition over mates, combined with male preference over large females, is a common feature
that can drive to size assortative mating and, eventually, sexual selection. In crabs, appendage autotomy can affect assortative
mating and opportunity for sexual selection by affecting size advantage in mating contests. In this work, we evaluate the
effect of size and appendage autotomy in generating assortative mating in the mud crab
Cyrtograpsus angulatus. Field observations of guarding pairs in two different populations show a positive correlation between carapace width of
males and females in both the populations. In one of the populations, incidence of appendage autotomy was low and the variability
in the size of reproductive males was lower than the variability in the size of randomly collected males (i.e. only larger
males were successful in getting a female), whereas there was no differences in the other population (i.e. most male sizes
were successful) where the incidence of appendage autotomy was very high, indicating that the importance of size is higher
when the incidence of autotomy is low. In this context, experiments (in both populations) show that, in contests for a female,
larger males outcompete smaller ones only when they had intact appendages. When males had missing chelipeds, winning or loosing
against smaller males was random. This may lead to a decrease in the importance of male size in populations with high incidence
of cheliped autotomy, affecting assortative mating and opportunity for selection and, thus, affecting selective pressures.
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