Mating status affects female choice in Chloridea virescens

Sexual selection in animals has been mostly studied in species in which males are signallers and females are choosers. However, in many species females are (also) signallers. In species with non-signalling females, virgin females are hypothesized to be less choosy than mated females, as virgins must mate to realize fitness and the number of available males is generally limited. Yet, when females signal to attract males, mate limitation can be overcome. We tested how virgin and mated females differ in their calling behaviour, mating latency, and in mate choice, using the tobacco budworm Chloridea (Heliothis) virescens as an example for a species in which females are not only choosers but also signallers. We found that virgin females signalled longer than mated females, but virgin and mated signalling females were equally ready to mate, in contrast to non-signalling females. However, we found that virgin signalling females showed weaker mate preference than mated females, which can be exp..., excerpt from Zweerus, N. L., van Wijk, M., Smallegange, I. M., & Groot, A. T. (2022). Mating status affects female choice when females are signalers. Ecology and Evolution, 12, e8864
Study organism
Chloridea (Heliothis) virescens populations originated from North Carolina State University (YDK strain) and the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology, Jena, and have been reared at the Institute for Biodiversity and Ecosystem and Dynamics (IBED), University of Amsterdam since 2011. We conducted the experiment for this study between April 2018 and November 2019. The moths were kept in a climate chamber at 60% relative humidity and 25 ± 1°C, with a 14 h light (photophase): 10 h dark (scotophase) photoperiod (lights off at 11 a.m. CET). Larvae were reared on artificial pinto bean diet (Burton, 1970) in individual plastic cups (37 ml, Solo, Lake Forest, Illinois). Pupae were checked daily for eclosion (i.e., hatching of adult) and emerged adults were fed 10 % sucrose solution provided th..., , EAD ME for data for manuscript ID: ECE-2021-12-02045_R1

Title: Mating status affects female choice when females are signallers

Consists of three datasets and one README file.

1_The data set SIGNALLING contains a time series of signalling (calling) behaviour per individual in a binomial manner (0 = not calling, 1 = calling/signalling). The experiment started at 11am (time = 0). The time_min column thus states the number of minutes from the start of the observations. NA = not applicable / missing value

Column names meaning:

no = number for processing

date_start = date of the start of the experiment

sample = unique sample id

female_status = female mating status

time = actual time of day

time_min = duration in minutes since start of the experiment

calling = female behaviour as calling (yes = 1, no =0)

2_The data set LATENCY reports the mating latencies of mated and virgin females. Male and female pupal mass were included in the analysis (see methods). The time from the start of ...