Meeting Abstract
Male crickets attract females by singing a species-specific song. A different song, called courtship song, is used at close range, and may indicate a male’s individual characteristics in addition to his species identity. Earlier work found that female crickets preferred longer courtship songs with longer trills and shorter intervals between pulses. At the same time, males with longer trills seem to pay a price via a less vigorous immune response and lower sperm viability. This supports observations from other studies that there is a tradeoff between immunity and reproductive effort. Because older crickets may be more likely than younger crickets to invest more energy into attracting mates than on sustaining themselves, we expect that the older crickets would sing songs with longer trills and shorter intervals as compared to younger crickets. Our research centers on the study of the Pacific Field Cricket, Teleogryllus oceanicus, and how its courtship song changes when immune challenged at different life stages. Using these results, we can then evaluate how the crickets’ resource allocation strategies vary during development to maximize individual fitness, the two major factors of which are reproduction and individual survival.
