repeatability of mating failure in a polyandrous bug

Mating failure, characterized by the lack of production of offspring following copulation, is relatively common across taxa yet is little understood. It is unclear whether mating failures are stochastic occurrences between incompatible mating partners or represent a persistent, meaningful phenotype...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of evolutionary biology 2015-08, Vol.28 (8), p.1578-1582
Main Authors: Greenway, E. V(Ginny), Shuker, D. M
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Animal reproduction
Animals
brothers
Copulation
Evolutionary biology
Female
females
Hemiptera - physiology
heritability
insect reproduction
Insects
Lygaeus simulans
Male
males
mating failure
phenotype
polyandry
progeny
Sexual Behavior, Animal
sexual selection
Short Communication
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Summary:Mating failure, characterized by the lack of production of offspring following copulation, is relatively common across taxa yet is little understood. It is unclear whether mating failures are stochastic occurrences between incompatible mating partners or represent a persistent, meaningful phenotype on the part of one or other sex. Here we test this in the seed bug Lygaeus simulans, by sequentially mating families of males with randomly allocated unrelated females and calculating the repeatability of mating outcome for each individual male and family. Mating outcome is significantly repeatable within individual males but not across full‐sib brothers. We conclude that mating failure represents a consistent male‐associated phenotype with low heritability in this species, affected by as yet undetermined environmental influences on males.
ISSN:1010-061X
1420-9101
DOI:10.1111/jeb.12678