Mate-guarding in a promiscuous insect : species discrimination influences context-dependent behaviour
Abstract
Mating strategy is often informed by social context. However, information on social environment may be sensitive to interference by nearby heterospecifics, a process known as reproductive interference (RI). When heterospecific individuals are present in the environment, failures in species discrimination can lead to sub-optimal mating behaviours, such as misplaced courtship, misplaced rivalry behaviours, or heterospecific copulation attempts. All aspects of mating behaviour that are influenced by social context may be prone to RI, including copulatory behaviours associated with mate-guarding in the presence of possible competitors. Here we investigate the effect of three heterospecifics on the mate-guarding behaviour of male Lygaeus equestris seed bugs. We find that, despite previously reported heterospecific mating harassment amongst these species of lygaeid bug, male L. equestris are able to effectively distinguish rival conspecific males from heterospecifics. Thus, heterospecific mating attempts in this group may reflect selection on males to mate opportunistically, rather than a failure of species discrimination.
Citation
Burdfield-Steel , E R & Shuker , D M 2014 , ' Mate-guarding in a promiscuous insect : species discrimination influences context-dependent behaviour ' , Evolutionary Ecology , vol. 28 , no. 6 , pp. 1031-1042 . https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-014-9726-7
Publication
Evolutionary Ecology
Status
Peer reviewed
ISSN
0269-7653Type
Journal article
Rights
© The Author(s) 2014. Open Access. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited.
Description
Funding: NERC studentshipCollections
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