Effects of past mating behavior versus past ejaculation on male mate choice and male attractiveness

Past reproductive effort allows males to assess their ability to acquire mates, but it also consumes resources that can reduce their future competitive ability. Few studies have examined how a male’s reproductive history affects his subsequent mate choice; and, to date, no study has determined the relative contribution of past mating behavior and past ejaculate production because these two forms of investment are naturally highly correlated. Here, we disentangled the relative effects of past mating behavior and past ejaculate production in male mosquitofish (Gambusia holbrooki) by experimentally preventing some males from ejaculating when trying to mate. We assessed the effect of mating behavior on mate choice by comparing males that had previously been with or without access to females and male rivals for 16 weeks; and assessed the effect of ejaculation on mate choice by comparing males that either could or could not ejaculate when they had access to females for 16 weeks. We compared (..., , , # Effects of past mating behavior versus past ejaculation on male mate choice and male attractiveness

## Description of the data and file structure

The analysis can be re-run using the R code called \"Chung et al. mosquitofish mate choice\". For each response variable (time females spent with each male; total distance males swam; total time males spent inspecting females; proportion of time males spent with the solitary female), we used mixed models including male ID as a random factor, to account for repeated measurements of the same male. We included reproductive treatment (“naïve”, “mating only”, “mating and ejaculation”), treatment duration (8 weeks, 16 weeks) and their interaction in initial models. A non-significant interaction was removed from the final model to interpret the main effects. Removing non-significant interactions did not significantly alter the model fit, as determined by log-likelihood ratio tests. Full model outputs (for both initial and final models) are provid...