Male sexually coercive behaviour drives increased swimming efficiency in female guppies

Sexual coercion of females by males is widespread across sexually reproducing species. It stems from a conflict of interest over reproduction and exerts selective pressure on both sexes. For females, there is often a significant energetic cost of exposure to male sexually coercive behaviours.
Our understanding of the efficiency of female resistance to male sexually coercive behaviour is key to understanding how sexual conflict contributes to population level dynamics and ultimately to the evolution of sexually antagonistic traits.
Overlooked within this context are plastic physiological responses of traits within the lifetime of females that could moderate the energetic cost imposed by coercive males. Here, we examined whether conflict over the frequency and timing of mating between male and female guppies Poecilia reticulata can induce changes in swimming performance and aerobic capacity in females as they work to escape harassment by males.
Females exposed to higher levels of haras...