Abstract
The handicap principle proposes that sexual signals must be costly to be honest. Honesty may be maintained by the costs paid by honest signallers or by the potential costs of cheating. In the latter, handicaps should emerge as a consequence of specific biological constraints, such as life-history trade-offs. Nuptial prey-giving arthropods are good systems to investigate the honesty of sexual signals taking into account trade-offs between self-maintenance and mating effort. We experimentally evaluated if prolonged food shortage during early adulthood imposes long-term negative effects on gift construction by males of the spider Paratrechalea ornata. We also evaluated whether a burst of food availability improved body condition of poorly fed males, increasing their frequency of gift construction. Poorly fed males hardly constructed gifts, even after a marked increase in feeding rate, which clearly improved their body condition. Moreover, initially poorly fed males that latter received high food intake constructed lighter gifts than continuously well fed males. The long-term effects of prolonged dietary restriction on male propensity to construct a gift and on the size of this gift may increase the honesty of this sexually selected signal. From the female’s perspective the offer of a gift may bring information on male quality.
Highlights
A prey, a male can allocate it to self-maintenance or to the construction of the nuptial gift, a sexually selected trait that is known to entice females to copulate and to increase both sperm transfer and the number of eggs sired by the male[5,6,7,8]
Male body condition was similar between the two male groups at the beginning of the conditioning period (InterceptPoorly fed mean condition = 0.0010, SE = 0.0012, β Well fed = − 0.0019, 95%CI = − 0.0055 to 0.0013, pMCMC = 0.276)
Our results provide evidence of long-term negative effects of prolonged dietary restriction on nuptial gift construction
Summary
A prey, a male can allocate it to self-maintenance or to the construction of the nuptial gift, a sexually selected trait that is known to entice females to copulate and to increase both sperm transfer and the number of eggs sired by the male[5,6,7,8]. Experimental studies with the prey giving spider Pisaura mirabilis (Pisauridae) indicate that satiated males construct nuptial gifts more frequently and invest more energy depositing a thick layer of silk on these gifts than starved males in the presence of female cues[11] These findings suggest that dietary restriction during the adult phase imposes a short-term negative effect on the gift construction behaviour. We performed an experiment to evaluate if prolonged dietary restriction during the early adult phase of males imposes long-term negative effects on gift construction using the spider P. ornata as study system Courtship in this species involves the transfer of a prey wrapped in silk from the male to the female[9]. Should poorly fed males increase body condition, but are still unable to construct a nuptial gift, we have evidence that gift construction is a reliable indicator of long-term male condition
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