Abstract
Females must choose among potential mates with different phenotypes in a variety of social contexts. Many male traits are inherent and unchanging, but others are labile to social context. Competition, for example, can cause physiological changes that reflect recent wins and losses that fluctuate throughout time. We may expect females to respond differently to males depending on the outcome of their most recent fight. In Bolitotherus cornutus (forked fungus beetles), males compete for access to females, but copulation requires female cooperation. In this study, we use behavioral trials to determine whether females use chemical cues to differentiate between males and whether the outcome of recent male competition alters female preference. We measured female association time with chemical cues of two size‐matched males both before and after male–male competition. Females in our study preferred to associate with future losers before males interacted, but changed their preference for realized winners following male competitive interactions. Our study provides the first evidence of change in female preference based solely on the outcome of male–male competition.
Highlights
Sexual selection operates through a dynamic interplay between intra-and intersexual selection (Hunt et al, 2009)
We examined the behavior of Bolitotherus cornutus to ask: (a) Do females perceive males through substrate born chemical cues?, (b) Do females choose to associate with the chemical cues of winning males?, and (c) Do female choose to associate with male chemical cues based on their interactivity? Bolitotherus cornutus are a tenebrionid beetle in which males are distinguished by the presence of elaborate horns, which they use in competition for access to females (Conner, 1988, 1989)
The outcome of intrasexual competition can alter the way males are perceived by their potential mates
Summary
Sexual selection operates through a dynamic interplay between intra-and intersexual selection (Hunt et al, 2009). Females have an anal sternite (a hard covering on the ventral surface of the terminal abdominal segment) that acts as a lock system giving the female control over copulation (Conner, 1988), and may use chemical cues during courtship to determine whether copulation should proceed In this system, larger males have been considered to be of higher quality with more access to females (Conner, 1988; Formica et al, 2016; Mitchem et al, 2019), but previous work done in controlled experiments suggests that females do not necessarily prefer larger males (Brown & Bartalon, 1986; Brown et al, 1985). We performed a second set of female choice trials using the same male pairs to test whether females altered their preference (i.e., female choice, given that female preference is restricted to our experimental conditions) for winning or losing males
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