Males optimally balance selfish and kin-selected strategies of sexual competition in the guppy.

Abstract

Resolving the strategies by which organisms compete for limited resources is key to understanding behavioural and social evolution. When competing for matings, males in many species allocate mating effort preferentially towards higher-quality females. How males balance this against avoiding competition with rival males, who should also prefer high-quality females, is poorly understood. Kin selection theory further complicates these dynamics: males should avoid competition with close relatives especially because of added, indirect fitness costs. However, whether between-male relatedness modulates the intensity of intrasexual competition is equivocal. Here, we develop and test an analytical model describing how males should optimally allocate their mating efforts in response to information about differences in female quality, competitor presence/absence and competitor relatedness. Using freely interacting groups of Trinidadian guppies (Poecilia reticulata), we show concordance between observed and predicted mating effort allocation across all combinations of these factors. Thus, male mating effort is sensitive to variation in female quality, competitor presence and competitor relatedness, which is consistent with a kin-selected strategy of male-male competition. The fit of our model's predictions demonstrates that males integrate assessments of female quality and competitive context in a quantitatively meaningful way, implicating a competitive strategy that has been fine-tuned to maximize inclusive fitness gains.