Abstract
Multiple mating by females (polyandry) is a widespread behavior occurring in diverse taxa, species, and populations. Polyandry can also vary widely within species, and individual populations, so that both monandrous and polyandrous females occur together. Genetic differences can explain some of this intraspecific variation in polyandry, but environmental factors are also likely to play a role. One environmental factor that influences many fundamental biological processes is temperature. Higher temperatures have been shown to directly increase remating in laboratory studies of insects. In the longer term, high temperature could also help to drive the evolution of larger-scale patterns of behavior by changing the context-dependent balance of costs and benefits of polyandry across environments. We examined the relative influence of rearing and mating temperatures on female remating in populations of Drosophila pseudoobscura that show a latitudinal cline in polyandry in nature, using a range of ecologically relevant temperatures. We found that females of all genotypes remated more at cooler temperatures, which fits with the observation of higher average frequencies of polyandry at higher latitudes in this species. However, the impact of temperature was outweighed by the strong genetic control of remating in females in this species. It is likely that genetic factors provide the primary explanation for the latitudinal cline in polyandry in this species.
Highlights
Polyandry, or mating with multiple males by females, is a widespread behavior, occurring in a diverse array of taxa from a variety of ecological and environmental habitats (Andersson 1994; Birkhead and Møller 1998; Taylor et al 2014)
Supplementary material can be found at http://www.beheco. oxfordjournals.org/
This essentially confirmed that we were using 2 populations that represented different areas of the latitudinal cline in polyandry, and had selected a sample of genotypes from each population that showed genetic variation in polyandry but were neutral with respect to latitude with which to test the effects of temperature on the cline in polyandry
Summary
Mating with multiple males by females, is a widespread behavior, occurring in a diverse array of taxa from a variety of ecological and environmental habitats (Andersson 1994; Birkhead and Møller 1998; Taylor et al 2014). One environmental influence on female remating that has recently been of interest is the effect of ambient temperature (Saeki et al 2005; Kindle et al 2006; Katsuki and Miyatake 2009; Kellermann et al 2009; Olsson et al 2011; Grazer and Martin 2012; Best et al 2012). High temperatures can impose time constraints on courtship and mating through risk of desiccation (Kellermann et al 2009; Grazer and Martin 2012), or increase the rate at which important proteins denature, such as the sex peptides secreted and transferred at mating by many male insects to reduce female remating (Best et al 2012). Many studies have so far shown a positive relationship between ambient temperature and remating, with females
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