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Effects of extreme variation in female morph frequencies on the mating behaviour of male damselflies

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Abstract

Female-limited polymorphism is often attributed to selection to avoid excessive male mating attempts. It is encountered in various taxonomic groups, but is particularly common in damselflies, where one female morph (andromorph) typically resembles the conspecific male in colour pattern, while the other(s) (gynomorph(s)) do not. Two sets of theories have been proposed to explain the phenomenon in damselflies, which can be classified as the learned mate recognition (LMR) and male mimicry (MM) hypotheses. To test predictions of these hypotheses, we evaluated the rate of male sexual response towards female morphs and conspecific males in the damselfly Nehalennia irene. The LMR hypothesis predicts that males should respond sexually to andromorphs at greater rates in populations containing a higher relative frequency of andromorphs. The MM hypothesis predicts that males respond more often sexually to both andromorphs and males as the ratio of andromorphs to males increases. While LMR predicts that the rate of mating attempts towards gynomorphs should vary, the MM predicts that it should be relatively fixed. On experimentally presenting live specimens to focal males in five different populations with extreme variation in female morph frequencies, we observed that as the andromorph frequency and ratio of andromorphs to males increased, the proportion of male mating attempts increased on both andromorphs and males, whereas it decreased on gynomorphs. While the simplest form of the MM hypothesis is rejected, the results support specific predictions of both hypotheses and suggest that future studies should not treat these hypotheses as mutually exclusive.

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Acknowledgements

Rob Cannings and Staffan Lindgren provided local advice and support while in Prince George, British Columbia and Mark Forbes provided advice and support in Ontario. We wish to thank Frank Phelan for accommodating us at various times throughout the season at the Queens Biological Field Station, Ontario. We also thank Øistein Holen and our referees for some valuable comments on the manuscript. IWT-Flanders (JB), NSERC (TNS), the University of Antwerp and FWO-Flanders (HVG) provided financial support. HVG is a postdoctoral fellow with the Fund for Scientific Research-Flanders (FWO-Flanders).

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  1. Janice J. Ting

    Present address: Integrative Behaviour and Neuroscience Group, Department of Biological Sciences, University of Toronto Scarborough, Toronto, ON, M1C 1A4, Canada

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Carleton University, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6, Canada

    Janice J. Ting, Felipe Pérez Jvostov & Thomas N. Sherratt

  2. Evolutionary Ecology Group, University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium

    Jessica Bots & Hans van Gossum

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  1. Janice J. Ting
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Correspondence to Thomas N. Sherratt.

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Communicated by N. Wedell

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Ting, J.J., Bots, J., Pérez Jvostov, F. et al. Effects of extreme variation in female morph frequencies on the mating behaviour of male damselflies. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 64, 225–236 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-009-0839-x

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