Environment and mate attractiveness in a wild insect

Abstract
The role of female choice in sexual selection is well established, including the recognition that females choose their mates based on multiple cues. These cues may include intrinsic aspects of a male’s phenotype as well as aspects of the environment associated with the male. The role of the spatial location of a potential mate has been well studied in territorial vertebrates. However, despite their role as laboratory models for studies of sexual selection, the potential for insects to choose their mates on the basis of location has scarcely been studied. We studied a natural population of individually tagged crickets (Gryllus campestris) in a meadow in Northern Spain. Adults typically move between burrows every few days, allowing us to examine how pairing success of males can be predicted by the burrow they occupy, independent of their own characteristics. We observed the entirety of ten independent breeding seasons to provide replication and to determine whether..., We have monitored the population of G. campestris in our meadow in northern Spain (see WildCrickets.org)  since 2006 (Makai et al., 2020; Rodríguez-Muñoz et al., 2019b; Rodríguez-Muñoz et al., 2019c; Rodríguez-Muñoz et al., 2010).  These field crickets have a single annual generation; nymphs of both sexes dig burrows in the autumn and overwinter in them, emerging to resume foraging and growth in early spring (Rodríguez-Muñoz et al., 2011). The first adults appear in our meadow in late April, and a few days after becoming adult, males begin to call by rubbing their forewings together. This calling attracts females (Zuk and Simmons, 1997), but males also move around the meadow (Rodríguez-Muñoz et al., 2019d) encountering conspecifics at burrows where adults of both sexes spend the vast majority of their time.  Both sexes compete for burrows: when two members of the same sex meet at a burrow, either one of them immediately leaves, or there is a fight, which is followed by the loser leaving..., File is .csv.  We are keen to collaborate in exploiting these data so if you have an idea about how to use them please contact us and we can provide lots of additional information.