Females prefer males producing a high-rate song with shorter timbal-stridulatory sound intervals in a cicada species  

作　　者：Zehai HOU Yunxiang LIU Songshan WEI Cong WEI 

机构地区：[1]Key Laboratory of Plant Protection Resources and Pest Management of the Ministry of Education,College of Plant Protection,Northwest A&F University,Yangling,Shaanxi 712100,China [2]Beijing Key Laboratory for Forest Pest Control,College of Forestry,Beijing Forestry University,Beijing 100083,China

出　　处：《Current Zoology》2022年第1期103-112,共10页动物学报（英文版）

基　　金：This study was funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Grant Nos.31772505 and 32070476).

摘　　要：Uncovering mate choice and factors that lead to the choice are very important to understanding sexual selection in evolutionary change.Cicadas are known for their loud sounds produced by males using the timbals.However,males in certain cicada species emit 2 kinds of sounds using respectively timbals and stridulatory organs,and females may produce their own sounds to respond to males.What has never been considered is the mate choice in such cicada species.Here,we investigate the sexual selection and potential impact of predation pressure on mate choice in the cicada Subpsaltria yangi Chen.It possesses stridulatory sound-producing organs in both sexes in addition to the timbals in males.Results show that males producing calling songs with shorter timbal–stridulatory sound intervals and a higher call rate achieved greater mating success.No morphological traits were found to be correlated with mating success in both sexes,suggesting neither males nor females display mate preference for the opposite sex based on morphological traits.Males do not discriminate among responding females during mate searching,which may be due to the high energy costs associated with their unusual mate-seeking activity and the male-biased predation pressure.Females generally mate once but a minority of them re-mated after oviposition which,combined with the desirable acoustic traits of males,suggest females may maximize their reproductive success by choosing a high-quality male in the first place.This study contributes to our understanding mechanisms of sexual selection in cicadas and other insects suffering selective pressure from predators.

关 键 词：CICADIDAE female choice mating success predation pressure sexual selection. 

分 类 号：Q95[生物学—动物学]