Female preference variation has implications for the maintenance of an alternative mating strategy in a swordtail fish
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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Cited by (48)
A study of tactical and sexual dimorphism in cognition with insights for sexual conflict
2020, Animal BehaviourCitation Excerpt :Given the likelihood of trade-offs between each of the different investments females could make with the additional resources from their mothers to increase their fitness (see Herczeg et al., 2019; Kotrschal et al., 2013), the additional investment into brain size would suggest that investing energy into larger brains directly benefits females. In addition, we can rule out a correlation between preference for males with faster learning performance indirectly selecting for faster learning performance in females, as females in X. multilineatus on average prefer courter males, who were shown here to have slower learning performance (Morris et al., 2010; Rios-Cardenas et al., 2007). Finally, we can rule out the influences of most conditions and experiences during development known to influence cognition (Brandão, Braithwaite, & Gonçalves-de-Freitas, 2015; Brown & Braithwaite, 2005; Ebbesson & Braithwaite, 2012) as influences on the variation we detected, since the fish in this study were reared in controlled laboratory conditions with limited social experiences.
Frequency-dependent selection and fluctuations around an equilibrium for alternative reproductive tactics in a swordtail
2018, Animal BehaviourCitation Excerpt :Previously, we suggested that variation in female mate preference could shift the frequency at which ARTs are at equilibrium (Morris et al., 2010). Females in X. multilineatus have a significant preference to mate with courter males on average; however, the strength of this preference increases with female size, and in the 2007 sample, both female size and preference predicted whether a female would mate with a courter or sneaker male (Morris et al., 2010; Rios-Cardenas et al., 2007). Therefore, populations with smaller females (2007 sample) should have weaker positive selection for courter males than populations with larger females (2009), which could shift the equilibrium towards a higher frequency of sneaker males (see Morris et al., 2010).
Mate choice as social cognition: Predicting female behavioral and neural plasticity as a function of alternative male reproductive tactics
2015, Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences
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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.