Meeting Abstract
82.5 Thursday, Jan. 7 Males can not lie: Females use honest cues to assess fitness. LONGPRE, KRISTY M.*; KATZ, L. S.; Rutgers University, New Brunswick; Rutgers University, New Brunswick kristylongpre@gmail.com
In a promiscuous species like Capra hircus, in which maternal investment is greater than paternal investment, a female may mate selectively with a more fit male, resulting in improved reproductive fitness. Previous research from our laboratory indicates that estrous females prefer males with higher serum testosterone (T) concentrations over males with lower concentrations, suggesting that females are using a T-dependent cue to assess potential mates. Further, our data provide evidence that both courtship display and chemical signals play an important role in the female’s preference for a particular male. When estrous females were provided a choice between rags saturated with odors from bucks (gonad-intact males) versus stags (castrated males), they spent more time near the buck-scented rags. Estrous females also preferred bucks who courted them at a high frequency (120 courts/10m) compared to those who courted them at a low frequency (40 courts/10min). In two preliminary studies examining chemical signaling and serum T concentrations, we found that males display an increase in self-scent marking (self-enurination) early in the breeding season when T concentrations are high. This behavior decreased as the breeding season progressed and T concentrations normally decreased. In the second preliminary study we found that high-courting bucks have higher serum T concentrations compared to low-courting bucks, and bucks that courted at a medium frequency had serum T concentrations that fell between the high- and low-courting males. Taken together, these results suggest that both courting frequency and chemical cues provided by bucks may be honest indicators of T concentrations and thus buck quality. Additional studies are underway to further examine the relationship between courtship frequency, chemical cues and serum T concentrations.
