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- Title
Do pre- and post-copulatory sexually selected traits covary in large herbivores?
- Authors
Ferrandiz-Rovira, Mariona; Lemaître, Jean-François; Lardy, Sophie; López, Bernat C.; Cohas, Aurélie
- Abstract
In most species, males compete to gain both matings (via pre-copulatory competition) and fertilizations (via post-copulatory competition) to maximize their reproductive success. However, the quantity of resources devoted to sexual traits is finite, and so males are predicted to balance their investment between pre- and post-copulatory expenditure depending on the expected pay-offs that should vary according to mating tactics. In Artiodactyla species, males can invest in weapons such as horns or antlers to increase their mating gains or in testes mass/sperm dimensions to increase their fertilization efficiency. Moreover, it has been suggested that in these species, males with territory defence mating tactic might preferentially increase their investment in post-copulatory traits to increase their fertilization efficiency whereas males with female defence mating tactic might increase their investment in pre-copulatory sexually selected traits to prevent other males from copulating with females. In this study, we thus test the prediction that male's weapon length (precopulatory trait) covaries negatively with relative testes size and/or sperm dimensions (postcopulatory traits) across Artiodactyla using a phylogenetically controlled framework. Results Surprisingly no association between weapon length and testes mass is found but a negative association between weapon length and sperm length is evidenced. In addition, neither prenor post-copulatory traits were found to be affected by male mating tactics. Conclusions We propose several hypotheses that could explain why male ungulates may not balance their reproductive investment between pre- and post-copulatory traits.
- Subjects
ANIMAL sexual behavior; GENITALIA; FERTILIZATION (Biology); SPERM competition; HORNS (Anatomy); SPERMATOZOA
- Publication
BMC Evolutionary Biology, 2014, Vol 14, Issue 1, p1
- ISSN
1471-2148
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1186/1471-2148-14-79