Meeting Abstract

P3-57  Monday, Jan. 6  Does Mating with a Novel Male Affect Female Fecundity in Bean Beetles? COLLUM, A*; WHITMAN, S; HODGES, A; State University of New York collan18@oneonta.edu

The bean beetle, Callosobruchus maculatus, is both a crop pest and a model organism for understanding sexual conflict. Mating is costly for female bean beetles because the males have barbed copulatory organs, used to remove other males’ sperm from the females’ reproductive tracts. However, females may also benefit from multiple mating due to the water in the male ejaculate and due to increased genetic variability in their offspring. We compared fecundity between females mated twice to the same male and females mated to two different males. We predict that female fecundity will decline more slowly in the novel male group than the same male group.