Abstract
In animals, including humans, the social environment can serve as a public information network in which individuals can gather public information about the quality of potential mates by observing conspecifics during sexual interactions. The observing individual itself is also a part of this information network. When recognized by the observed conspecifics as an audience, his/her presence could influence the sexual interaction between those individuals, because the observer might be considered as a potential mate or competitor. One of the most challenging questions in sexual selection to date is how the use of public information in the context of mate choice is linked to the fitness of individuals. Here, we could show that public information influences mate-choice behaviour in sailfin molly males, Poecilia latipinna, and influences the amount of sperm males transfer to a female partner. In the presence of an audience male, males spent less time with the previously preferred, larger of two females and significantly more time with the previously non-preferred, smaller female. When males could physically interact with a female and were faced with an audience male, three audience females or no audience, males transferred significantly more sperm to a female partner in the presence of an audience male than with female audience or no audience and spent less time courting his female partner. This is the first study showing that public information use turns into fitness investment, which is the crucial factor to understand the role of public information in the dynamic processes in sexual selection.
Highlights
Theories of sexual selection assume that female and male mate preferences are genetically determined
Audience Experiment Focal males and audience males were matched for body length (Mann-Whitney U, N1 = 12, N2 = 12, Z = 20.435, P = 0.671)
Our results showed that males invested less time in courting their female partners in the presence of an audience male
Summary
Theories of sexual selection assume that female and male mate preferences are genetically determined (overview in [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]). This has been shown in an enormous number of experimental studies throughout the animal kingdom, including invertebrates and vertebrates [8,9,10,11]. Female and male mate preferences are genetically determined, both sexes in a wide range of taxa are able to use public information to evaluate prospective mates [14,15,16,17,18]. An individual can extract specific information about a prospective mate (e.g. fighting ability, fighting tactics, body condition, attractiveness, willingness to cooperate, etc.) by interacting directly with this conspecific or indirectly by observing this individual when interacting with others, i.e. by eavesdropping on that individual [19,20,21,22]
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