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Abstract
Theoretically, sexual signals should provide honest information about mating benefits and many sexually reproducing species use honest signals when signalling to potential mates. Male crickets produce two types of acoustic mating signals: a long-distance mate attraction call and a short-range courtship call. We tested whether wild-caught fall field cricket (Gryllus pennsylvanicus) males in high condition (high residual mass or large body size) produce higher effort calls (in support of the honest signalling hypothesis). We also tested an alternative hypothesis, whether low condition males produce higher effort calls (in support of the terminal investment hypothesis). Several components of long-distance mate attraction calls honestly reflected male body size, with larger males producing louder mate attraction calls at lower carrier frequencies. Long-distance mate attraction chirp rate dishonestly signalled body size, with small males producing faster chirp rates. Short-range courtship calls dishonestly reflected male residual mass, as chirp rate and pulse rate were best explained by a curvilinear function of residual mass. By producing long-distance mate attraction calls and courtship calls with similar or higher effort compared to high condition males, low condition males (low residual mass or small body size) may increase their effort in current reproductive success at the expense of their future reproductive success, suggesting that not all sexual signals are honest.
Highlights
Honest signalling was termed ‘‘ubiquitous’’ in a recent game theory paper modeling signal evolution [1]
Acoustic Call Variability and Correlations On average, male G. pennsylvanicus long-distance mate attraction calls were characterized by a series of 4.7 kHz pulses concatenated into 111 ms chirps with 2–4 pulses per chirp (Figure 1 A & B; Table 1)
Theory predicts that male sexual signals should honestly indicate female mating benefits because the cost associated with signalling dishonestly should be too high for males in poor condition to maintain
Summary
Honest signalling was termed ‘‘ubiquitous’’ in a recent game theory paper modeling signal evolution [1]. Sexual signals are considered honest when they indicate the potential benefits that a female could receive by mating with an advertising male [3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10]. Males that are able to obtain more nutrients may have greater energy stores, and several studies have found a positive relationship between dietary nutrient availability and sexual signalling [11,12,13,14,15,16]. Given these points, females may benefit from selecting mates that exhibit condition-dependent signals. Condition is defined as variation in resource acquisition ability [17], which may result from differences in resource availability in the environment and/or individual physiological differences in the ability to assimilate and utilize resources
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