Abstract
BackgroundIntraspecific communication is of crucial importance throughout the animal kingdom and may involve a combination of visual, gustatory, olfactory and acoustic cues. Variation in male sex pheromone amount and composition may convey important information to female conspecifics, for instance on species identity or age. However, whether increased male pheromone titres are associated with fitness benefits for the female, thus indicating a role as an honest signal, is under debate.ResultsAgainst this background, we tested in the butterfly Bicyclus anynana (1) whether young males being successful or unsuccessful in gaining a mating differed in sex pheromone titres and (2) for associations between male pheromone titres and spermatophore mass, eupyrene sperm number, and a variety of female and offspring life-history traits. Successful and unsuccessful males did not differ in pheromone titres, however eupyrene sperm number was much higher in successful males. Pheromone titres were not associated with any fitness-related female or offspring trait measured in our study, though correlation analyses yielded evidence for trade-offs among specific traits. Patterns did not differ among control and olfaction-blocked females.ConclusionTherefore, we suggest that in young B. anynana pheromone titres do not indicate male quality.
Highlights
Intraspecific communication is of crucial importance throughout the animal kingdom and may involve a combination of visual, gustatory, olfactory and acoustic cues
No significant differences were found when comparing the number of successful males having higher or lower pheromone levels than their counterparts: MSP1, MSP2, MSP3, principal component (PC) male sex pheromone (MSP)
Our results suggest that when young male B. anynana present themselves for mating the role of male sex pheromones is smaller than initially thought
Summary
Intraspecific communication is of crucial importance throughout the animal kingdom and may involve a combination of visual, gustatory, olfactory and acoustic cues. Females may preferably mate with males showing a high resource holding potential / competitive ability which may directly benefit their offspring, or with males displaying specific cues typically being regarded as sexually selected signals [13, 14]. The latter may involve visual [15, 16], acoustic [17,18,19], olfactory [14, 20,21,22] or gustatory cues [22, 23].
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