IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/beheco/v15y2004i5p793-798.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

No direct or indirect benefits to cryptic female choice in house crickets (Acheta domesticus)

Author

Listed:
  • Rebecca R. Fleischman
  • Scott K. Sakaluk

Abstract

Cryptic female choice in crickets occurs through the premature removal of a male's spermatophore after copulation, which terminates sperm transfer. Although it is known that this behavior can directly influence the paternity of offspring, its effects on female fitness have not been directly assessed. We tested the hypothesis that spermatophore removal by female house crickets (Acheta domesticus) confers fitness benefits on females, by randomly assigning mates to females but permitting some females to freely remove spermatophores after mating (cryptic-choice treatment) while forcing others to accept complete ejaculates (no-choice treatment). Although there was about a two-fold difference in the volume of ejaculate received by females of the two treatments, there were no significant differences in female longevity, reproductive output, or offspring quality, as measured by offspring mass and developmental time. Although differential spermatophore removal by females imposes strong sexual selection on males, the absence of a clear treatment effect suggests that females obtain no direct or indirect genetic benefits through their postcopulatory mating preferences. Copyright 2004.

Suggested Citation

  • Rebecca R. Fleischman & Scott K. Sakaluk, 2004. "No direct or indirect benefits to cryptic female choice in house crickets (Acheta domesticus)," Behavioral Ecology, International Society for Behavioral Ecology, vol. 15(5), pages 793-798, September.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:beheco:v:15:y:2004:i:5:p:793-798
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/beheco/arh081
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:beheco:v:15:y:2004:i:5:p:793-798. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/beheco .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.