Search results for "Mating success"

Variation in male fertility in a polymorphic moth, Parasemia plantaginis

2016

The maintenance of multiple morphs in warning signals is enigmatic because directional selection through predator avoidance should lead to the rapid loss of such variation. Opposing natural and sexual selection is a good candidate driving the maintenance of multiple male morphs but it also includes another enigma: when warning signal efficiency differs between male morphs, why would females choose a phenotype with lower survival? We tested the hypothesis that indirect responses to selection on correlated characters through sexual selection may substantially shape the evolution of male coloration. If male phenotypes differ in their fertilization ability, female choice against the best surviv…

Height predicts jealousy differently for men and women

2008

Because male height is associated with attractiveness, dominance, and reproductive success, taller men may be less jealous. And because female height has a curvilinear relationship with health and reproductive success (with average-height females having the advantages), female height may have a curvilinear relationship with jealousy. In Study 1, male height was found to be negatively correlated with self-reported global jealousy, whereas female height was curvilinearly related to jealousy, with average-height women reporting the lowest levels of jealousy. In Study 2, male height was found to be negatively correlated with jealousy in response to socially influential, physically dominant, and…

Testosterone levels and their associations with lifetime number of opposite sex partners and remarriage in a large sample of American elderly men and…

2011

Testosterone (T) has been argued to modulate mating and parenting behavior in many species, including humans. The role of T for these behaviors has been framed as the challenge hypothesis. Following this hypothesis, T should be positively associated with the number of opposite sex partners a male has. Indeed research in humans has shown that T is positively related to the number of opposite sex partners a young man has had. Here we test, in both men and women, whether this relationship extends to the lifetime number of sex partners. We also explored whether or not T was associated with current marital status, partnership status and whether or not the participant remarried. Using a large sam…

Simultaneous age‐dependent and age‐independent sexual selection in the lekking black grouse(Lyrurus tetrix)

2014

Individuals' reproductive success is often strongly associated with their age, with typical patterns of early‐life reproductive improvement and late‐life senescence. These age‐related patterns are due to the inherent trade‐offs between life‐history traits competing for a limited amount of resources available to the organisms. In males, such trade‐offs are exacerbated by the resource requirements associated with the expression of costly sexual traits, leading to dynamic changes in trait expression throughout their life span. Due to the age dependency of male phenotypes, the relationship between the expression of male traits and mating success can also vary with male age. Hence, using longitu…

Effect of host plant quality on male sexual performances and consequences on female reproductive output in a phytophagous moth

2016

The abundance of phytophagous insects is determined by numerous interacting biotic and abiotic factors. In capital-breeding phytophagous insects, larval host plant quality is a key determinant of the adult phenotype and the performance of both males and females. Curiously, if the effect of host plant quality on female reproductive success is well-established, little effort has been conducted to determine this effect on male reproductive success. Moreover, in Lepidoptera, males transfer to females a spermatophore containing sperm and accessory gland products rich in nutrients that could be reinvested into female reproduction. The aim of this thesis was to evaluate how male larval nutrition o…

Many forms of the wood tiger moth (Parasemia plantaginis) : selective heterogeneity favours polymorphic warning signals

2013

Heterozygote advantage and pleiotropy contribute to intraspecific color trait variability

2022

The persistence of intrapopulation phenotypic variation typically requires some form of balancing selection because drift and directional selection eventually erode genetic variation. Heterozygote advantage remains a classic explanation for the maintenance of genetic variation in the face of selection. However, examples of heterozygote advantage, other than those associated with disease resistance, are rather uncommon. Across most of its distribution, males of the aposematic moth Arctia plantaginis have two hindwing phenotypes determined by a heritable one locus-two allele polymorphism (genotypes: WW/Wy = white morph, yy = yellow morph). Using genotyped moths, we show that the presence of o…