Elsevier

Animal Behaviour

Volume 74, Issue 3, September 2007, Pages 633-640
Animal Behaviour

Female preference variation has implications for the maintenance of an alternative mating strategy in a swordtail fish

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2007.01.002Get rights and content

Female preference variation over space and time could be an alternative to frequency-dependent selection as a mechanism maintaining alternative male reproductive strategies. In the swordtail fish, Xiphophorus nigrensis, males have alternative strategies where large courting males (courters) and smaller males (sneakers) have equal fitnesses due to a mating advantage for the courters and a higher probability of reaching sexual maturity for the sneakers. Variation in one of these advantages over space or time may be the mechanism that maintains these two strategies. We examined female preference variation for the courting strategy in Xiphophorus multilineatus, a species with the same strategies. Females had an overall significant preference for courters. The strength of this preference was positively related to female size, with smaller females having a weak preference for courters. If the relationship between female size and strength of preference is consistent over space and time, more smaller females would result in an weaker preference for courters, which would increase the relative mating advantage of sneakers. We assessed female size distribution and the frequency of each strategy across space and time and detected significant differences in mean female size across subpopulations and across time, as well as a relationship between mean female size and the relative frequencies of the two male strategies: courters were significantly more common in those samples with the largest females. These results suggest that variation across subpopulations of X. multilineatus in female preferences over space and/or time could shift the balance in fitness between the two strategies.

Section snippets

Study Organism

The swordtail X. multilineatus is found in the Río Coy and some of its tributaries (Río Pánuco basin), in the state of San Luis Potosí, Mexico (Rauchenberger et al. 1990). Males of this species differ in size by more than a factor of two and show size-related differences in mating behaviour (Zimmerer & Kallman 1989) similar to that described for the sibling species X. nigrensis (Ryan & Causey 1989). Four size classes of X. multilineatus have been identified, and these differ in their Y-linked P

Results

For all subpopulations, females spent more time with courters than with sneaker males (paired t tests: Oxitipa: t13 = 5.19, P < 0.001; Tambaque: t8 = 9.34, P < 0.001; Coy: t27 = 4.39, P < 0.001; Table 1). The slopes for the relationship between female size and strength of preference of individual subpopulations were not significantly different from each other (test of parallelism: F2,45 = 1.21, P = 0.31). Therefore, for further analysis, we pooled the data between subpopulations. A female's size was

Discussion

Our results confirm that female preference contributes to the previously detected mating advantage of larger courting males in X. multilineatus (Zimmerer & Kallman 1989). Consequentially, any spatial or temporal variation in female preference for courters should produce variation across space or time in this advantage for courters. Our results show that variation in female preference exists both across subpopulations and within subpopulations over time. We detected a significant relationship

Acknowledgments

We thank Kevin de Queiroz for his thoughtful comments on the manuscript; Natalie Dubois, Carla Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Geoff Baker, Abby Darrah, Andre Fernandez, Mike Nicholson and Yancey Fernandez for assistance in the field; Tracey Hayes, Leanne Adams, Jaclyn Mousoulias and Cari Moss for assistance with the female preferences tests; Rogelio Macías Ordóñez for logistic support; the Mexican Government for permission to collect the fish; and NSF (IBN 9983561) as well as Ohio University (Research

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    M. R. Morris and M. S. Tudor are at the Department of Biological Sciences, Ohio University, Athens, OH 45701, U.S.A.

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