Titre
The timing and interval of mate encounter affects investment during mating
Type
article
Institution
UNIL/CHUV/Unisanté + institutions partenaires
Périodique
Auteur(s)
Breedveld, M.C.
Auteure/Auteur
Fitze, P.S.
Auteure/Auteur
Liens vers les personnes
Liens vers les unités
ISSN
1095-8312
Statut éditorial
Publié
Date de publication
2016
Volume
118
Numéro
3
Première page
610
Dernière page/numéro d’article
617
Peer-reviewed
Oui
Langue
anglais
Résumé
The benefits obtained from mating are usually condition-dependent, favouring the evolution of flexible investment during copulation, for instance, in terms of invested time, energy, or sperm. Flexible investment strategies are predicted to depend on the likelihood of acquiring alternative mates and therefore they should depend on the timing of mate encounter. However, scarce experimental evidence for this hypothesis exists. Here we manipulated the time delay until first mating and the interval between first and second mating in the polygynandrous common lizard, Zootoca vivipara. We determined treatment effects on fertilisation success and copulation duration, the latter being a proxy for investment in mating and for quantity of transferred sperm. The duration of the second copulation decreased with increasing inter-mating interval and depended on the fertilisation success of first mates. The former provides evidence for time-dependent investment strategies, most likely resulting from the progression of the female's reproductive cycle. Fertilisation success of first mates increased with increasing inter-mating interval and was higher when females were closer to ovulation, showing that flexible investment strategies significantly affected male reproductive success. This points to fertilisation assurance, which may mitigate negative effects of low population density on reproductive success, e.g. Allee effects.
PID Serval
serval:BIB_06D6ED0DDB52
Open Access
Oui
Date de création
2015-12-01T20:49:06.548Z
Date de création dans IRIS
2025-05-20T19:08:18Z