Meeting Abstract
Mating interactions are rife with conflict because the evolutionary interests of males and females seldom coincide. Intersexual conflict modifies the opportunity, form, and intensity of sexual selection, yet the proximate factors affecting male coercive ability and female resistance are poorly understood. The invertebrate neurotransmitter octopamine both mediates aggression and underlies motivation to bite in male house crickets, but we currently lack an understanding of the influence of bite force and octopamine levels on mating interactions in these animals. We manipulated octopamine through supplementation with excess octopamine and administration of an octopamine antagonist, epinastine, to test the influence of octopamine on mating success in Acheta Domesticus crickets. We show using formal selection analysis that bite capacity influences the outcomes of mating interactions in house crickets, and that those outcomes are further altered in crickets with manipulated octopamine levels relative to unmanipulated controls.
