Reproductive foragers: male spiders choose mates by selecting among competitive environments

The better, the choosier: A meta-analysis on interindividual variation of male mate choice

Male mate choice occurs in several animal species, but we know little about the factors that influence the expression of this behaviour. Males vary in their capacity to acquire mates (i.e. male quality), which could be crucial to male mate choice expression but it is often overlooked. Using a meta‐analytical approach, we explore interindividual variation in the expression of male mate choice by comparing the mating investment of males of different qualities and phenotypes to high‐ and low‐quality females. We used two datasets that together contained information from 60 empirical studies, comprising 52 species. We found that males of all qualities and phenotypes prefer high‐quality females, but differ in the strength of such preference. High‐ and medium‐quality males are choosier than low‐quality males. Similarly, males that are larger or in greater body condition are choosier than their counterparts. In contrast, male body mass and age are not associated with changes in male mate choice. We also show that experimental design may influence our understanding of male mating investment patterns, which may limit the generalisation of our findings. Nonetheless, we argue that male quality may be an important feature in the expression of male mate choice.

Spatiotemporal dynamics of animal contests arise from effective forces between contestants

Competition among animals for resources, notably food, territories, and mates, is ubiquitous at all scales of life. This competition is often resolved through contests among individuals, which are commonly understood according to their outcomes and in particular, how these outcomes depend on decision-making by the contestants. Because they are restricted to end-point predictions, these approaches cannot predict real-time or real-space dynamics of animal contest behavior. This limitation can be overcome by studying systems that feature typical contest behavior while being simple enough to track and model. Here, we propose to use such systems to construct a theoretical framework that describes real-time movements and behaviors of animal contestants. We study the spatiotemporal dynamics of contests in an orb-weaving spider, in which all the common elements of animal contests play out. The confined arena of the web, on which interactions are dominated by vibratory cues in a two-dimensional space, simplifies the analysis of interagent interactions. We ask whether these seemingly complex decision-makers can be modeled as interacting active particles responding only to effective forces of attraction and repulsion due to their interactions. By analyzing the emergent dynamics of "contestant particles," we provide mechanistic explanations for real-time dynamical aspects of animal contests, thereby explaining competitive advantages of larger competitors and demonstrating that complex decision-making need not be invoked in animal contests to achieve adaptive outcomes. Our results demonstrate that physics-based classification and modeling, in terms of effective rules of interaction, provide a powerful framework for understanding animal contest behaviors.

Web wars: males of the golden orb-web spider invest more in fights for mated females

In addition to resource value, the cost of finding mates may affect how much males invest in fights for females. The cost of finding females may be imposed through natural factors extrinsic to males, such as female spatial distribution and predation pressure, which can be challenging to simulate in laboratory conditions. Therefore, studies under natural conditions may be suitable for understanding how the costs of finding mating partners affect male investment in fights. We used the spider Trichonephila clavipes to evaluate the hypotheses that males in field conditions invest more in contests for access to 1) unmated and 2) more fecund females and 3) when access to females is harder. To test these hypotheses, we recorded the occurrence, duration, and escalation of induced contests between males located in webs of females that differed in reproductive status (estimated by female life stage), fecundity (estimated by female abdominal area), and spatial distribution (i.e., isolated or aggregated with webs of other females). The occurrence and duration of contests were unrelated to female value or search costs. However, the probability for escalation was higher when males were fighting for adult (and probably mated) females. We also found that males tended to start a contest more often in aggregated webs. These results indicate that males of T. clavipes adjust investment in contests but contrarily to what we expected. We suggest that males invest more in contests for adult females because they are defending females that they previously fertilized to avoid sperm competition.

Differential female sociality is linked with the fine-scale structure of sexual interactions in replicate groups of red junglefowl, Gallus gallus

Recent work indicates that social structure has extensive implications for patterns of sexual selection and sexual conflict. However, little is known about the individual variation in social behaviours linking social structure to sexual interactions. Here, we use network analysis of replicate polygynandrous groups of red junglefowl (Gallus gallus) to show that the association between social structure and sexual interactions is underpinned by differential female sociality. Sexual dynamics are largely explained by a core group of highly social, younger females, which are more fecund and more polyandrous, and thus associated with more intense postcopulatory competition for males. By contrast, less fecund females from older cohorts, which tend to be socially dominant, avoid male sexual attention by clustering together and perching on branches, and preferentially reproduce with dominant males by more exclusively associating and mating with them. Collectively, these results indicate that individual females occupy subtly different social niches and demonstrate that female sociality can be an important factor underpinning the landscape of intrasexual competition and the emergent structure of animal societies.

Using knowledge from human research to improve understanding of contest theory and contest dynamics

Our understanding of animal contests and the factors that affect contest dynamics and decisions stems from a long and prosperous collaboration between empiricists and theoreticians. Over the last two decades, however, theoretical predictions regarding the factors that affect individual decisions before, during and after a contest are becoming increasingly difficult to test empirically. Extremely large sample sizes are necessary to experimentally test the nuanced theoretical assumptions surrounding how information is used by animals during a contest, how context changes the information used, and how individuals change behaviour as a result of both the information available and the context in which the information is acquired. In this review, we discuss how the investigation of contests in humans through the collaboration of biologists and psychologists may advance contest theory and dynamics in general. We argue that a long and productive history exploring human behaviour and psychology combined with technological advancements provide a unique opportunity to manipulate human perception during contests and collect unbiased data, allowing more targeted examinations of particular aspects of contest theory (e.g. winner/loser effects, information use as a function of age). We hope that our perspective provides the impetus for many future collaborations between biologists and psychologists.

Developmental Environment Effects on Sexual Selection in Male and Female Drosophila melanogaster

The developmental environment can potentially alter the adult social environment and influence traits targeted by sexual selection such as body size. In this study, we manipulated larval density in male and female Drosophila melanogaster, which results in distinct adult size phenotypes–high (low) densities for small (large) adults–and measured sexual selection in experimental groups consisting of adult males and females from high, low, or a mixture of low and high larval densities. Overall, large adult females (those reared at low larval density) had more matings, more mates and produced more offspring than small females (those reared at high larval density). The number of offspring produced by females was positively associated with their number of mates (i.e. there was a positive female Bateman gradient) in social groups where female size was experimentally varied, likely due to the covariance between female productivity and mating rate. For males, we found evidence that the larval environment affected the relative importance of sexual selection via mate number (Bateman gradients), mate productivity, paternity share, and their covariances. Mate number and mate productivity were significantly reduced for small males in social environments where males were of mixed sizes, versus social environments where all males were small, suggesting that social heterogeneity altered selection on this subset of males. Males are commonly assumed to benefit from mating with large females, but in contrast to expectations we found that in groups where both the male and female size varied, males did not gain more offspring per mating with large females. Collectively, our results indicate sex-specific effects of the developmental environment on the operation of sexual selection, via both the phenotype of individuals, and the phenotype of their competitors and mates.

The sensory ecology of adaptive landscapes

In complex environments, behavioural plasticity depends on the ability of an animal to integrate numerous sensory stimuli. The multidimensionality of factors interacting to shape plastic behaviour means it is difficult for both organisms and researchers to predict what constitutes an adaptive response to a given set of conditions. Although researchers may be able to map the fitness pay-offs of different behavioural strategies in changing environments, there is no guarantee that the study species will be able to perceive these pay-offs. We thus risk a disconnect between our own predictions about adaptive behaviour and what is behaviourally achievable given the umwelt of the animal being studied. This may lead to erroneous conclusions about maladaptive behaviour in circumstances when the behaviour exhibited is the most adaptive possible given sensory limitations. With advances in the computational resources available to behavioural ecologists, we can now measure vast numbers of interactions among behaviours and environments to create adaptive behavioural surfaces. These surfaces have massive heuristic, predictive and analytical potential in understanding adaptive animal behaviour, but researchers using them are destined to fail if they ignore the sensory ecology of the species they study. Here, we advocate the continued use of these approaches while directly linking them to perceptual space to ensure that the topology of the generated adaptive landscape matches the perceptual reality of the animal it intends to study. Doing so will allow predictive models of animal behaviour to reflect the reality faced by the agents on adaptive surfaces, vastly improving our ability to determine what constitutes an adaptive response for the animal in question.

The effect of male-male competition and ornament size on mean and variance of courtship intensity towards heterospecific and conspecific females

Discrimination between hetero- and conspecifics is the elementary choice an individual performs when searching for potential mates. The level of selectivity and strength of species discrimination is modified by variance in the quality of females, level of the male’s reproductive investment, mate search costs, and the competitive environment. The effect of the competitive environment on both species discrimination and conspecific mate choice has seldom been studied simultaneously. We experimentally manipulated territorial competition ofCalopteryx splendensdamselfly males in the wild, and asked two questions. First, does increased competition influence the territorial males’ responses towards introduced heterospecificC. virgofemales. The effect of the size of the territorial males’ sexual ornaments (wing spot) on their responses towards females was also investigated. Second, does increased competition influence the territorial males’ response towards conspecific females? The effect of the size of the territorial males ornament was again investigated. The mean level of response towards heterospecific females did not change between the control (i.e., no competitors presented) and the competition (i.e., two competitors presented) treatments, but the variance of responses towards heterospecifics was greater in the competition treatment. The territorial males’ responses towards conspecific females did not change between control and competition treatments. These results indicate individual differences in the behavior of males towards heterospecifics when territorial competition was experienced. The observed pattern of discrimination might be adaptive when overall reproductive success is considered.