Resource heterogeneity interacts with courtship rate to influence mating success in the wolf spider Schizocosa floridana

Abstract

Differences in food availability across life stages may have varying influences on adult male traits, potentially providing perceiving females with a wealth of information about environmental effects and a male's ability to cope with them across a variety of timescales. We use the wolf spider, Schizocosa floridana , to test the effect of variable food abundance on male reproductive success. Schizocosa floridana males perform elaborate courtship displays consisting of seismic signalling accompanied by waving and tapping of sexually dimorphic, pigmented forelegs. Previous research has shown that female mate choice is based upon some, but not all, aspects of this display and that the expression of some components is influenced by juvenile food availability, demonstrating the condition dependence of certain traits. We expand on this previous work by independently manipulating both juvenile and adult resource availability in a fully crossed 2 × 2 design and subsequently assessing male mating success and phenotype expression. We found that mating success was affected by a complex interaction between juvenile diet, adult diet and courtship rate. The significant three-way interaction indicates that females assessed males reared on a high juvenile diet and a low adult diet differently than they did males in all other treatment groups, suggesting that females incorporate information about a male's past and current foraging experience into complex mate choice decisions. As a confirmation of the effectiveness of our diet treatments, we documented a significant effect of juvenile diet on leg pigmentation and a significant effect of adult diet on body condition, yet these traits alone did not interact with courtship rate to predict male mating success.