Ingestion of male haemolymph and mating propensity of female sagebrush crickets: no evidence of a male-derived antiaphrodisiac

Abstract

Male sagebrush crickets, Cyphoderris strepitans, offer an unusual nuptial food gift to females during copulation: females feed on the hindwings of males and ingest haemolymph seeping from the wounds they inflict. Previous work has shown that females prevented from wing feeding during initial copulations are more receptive to subsequent matings than females permitted to wing feed. In the present study, we tested the hypothesis that hormonal substances contained in the haemolymph of males, and ingested by females during copulation, function to decrease female receptivity to further matings. We tested this hypothesis by providing females, experimentally prevented from wing feeding, with male-derived haemolymph or appropriate control substances (female-derived haemolymph or cricket Ringer's solution), and recording their propensity to mate (in 1999) or remate (in 2000). Female mating propensity was not affected by ingestion of male haemolymph in either experiment. Although these results are inconsistent with the male manipulation hypothesis, it is possible that putative receptivity-inhibiting substances are sequestered in the integument of males' hindwings, rather than contained in male haemolymph per se. Alternatively, both the results of the present study and those of previous studies are consistent with the hypothesis that wing feeding leads simply to satiation of females, and thereby diminishes their motivation to seek out additional matings. Copyright 2003 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Published by Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.