Courtship feeding in tree crickets increases insemination and female reproductive life span

Abstract

Courtship feeding in the majority of insects may influence female reproductive patterns either directly, through effects of the gift material, or indirectly, through correlated effects of prolonged copulation and larger ejaculates. This distinction is important because the cause of changes in fecundity may influence patterns of the allocation of resources between the sexes, with implications for the intensity of sexual selection and magnitude of sexual conflict. I show that post-copulatory feeding on the secretions of a gland on the metanotum of maleOecanthus nigricornis. Walker correlates with oviposition and affects the number of sperm remaining within the spermatophore. Manipulations of gland feeding and insemination duration showed that changes in fecundity are due to the gift rather than the ejaculate. Metanotal gland feeding increased female fecundity by increasing reproductive life span without significantly increasing oviposition rate. These changes in reproduction were directly due to the gift itself. Although gland feeding was positively correlated with the duration of insemination and thus the number of sperm transferred from the spermatophore to the female, experimentally prolonging or reducing insemination had no significant effect on reproductive life span. Male phenotype was also associated with female fecundity but in this case the effect was caused by an increase in the oviposition rate of females that mated with relatively large males. Male size had no significant effect on female reproductive life span, suggesting that its effect is not simply due to a quantitative increase in gift size. Three other measures of male phenotype, fluctuating asymmetry, condition (i.e. size-standardized wet body mass) and age, had no significant effects on female reproduction.