Mating Behavior Differences and the Cost of Mating in Allonemobius fasciatus and A. socius

• Published in: Journal of insect behavior Vol. 23; no. 4; pp. 268 - 289
• Main Authors: Birge, Leanna M., Hughes, Andrea L., Marshall, Jeremy L., Howard, Daniel J.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Boston Springer US 01-07-2010; Springer; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Agriculture; Animal Ecology; Animal ethology; Animal reproduction; Behavioral Sciences; Biological and medical sciences; Biomedical and Life Sciences; Entomology; Evolutionary Biology; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Insects; Life Sciences; Monte Carlo simulation; Neurobiology; Protozoa. Invertebrata; Psychology. Psychoanalysis. Psychiatry; Behavioral isolation; positive assortative mating; mating; Assortative mating; Insecta; Orthoptera; Allonemobius fasciatus; Interspecific comparison; Sexual behavior; Gryllidae; Cost benefit analysis; Mating; Allonemobius; Arthropoda; Invertebrata
• ISSN: 0892-7553; 1572-8889
• DOI: 10.1007/s10905-010-9213-0

Close range prezygotic barriers are assumed to be present between sister taxa who have overlapping distributions. Here we report the results of studies designed to test the existence of prezygotic barriers between two closely related species,
A. fasciatus
and
A. socius
. We finely dissected the courtship and mating rituals and performed Monte Carlo analysis on lengths of time and number of occurrences of particular events in the courtship mating sequence. These detailed investigations of the courtship and mating behavior of conspecific and heterospecific pairs demonstrate that behavioral isolation is non-existent. We also measure the adult lifespan and number of progeny produced from singly and multiply mated males and females in conspecific and heterospecific trials. We found that cost of a heterospecific mating is asymmetric between the sexes with males paying a higher cost.