Meeting Abstract

P2.7  Monday, Jan. 5  The importance of courtship song in female mate choice in the Pacific field cricket, Teleogryllus oceanicus REBAR, D*; ZUK, M; Univ. of California, Riverside; Univ. of California, Riverside dreba001@ucr.edu

In many animals, multiple signals, in one or more modalities (e.g. visual and chemical) and either simultaneously or separately, are used in mate selection. More specifically, field crickets have two acoustic signals used in mate choice: a calling song which attracts females from a distance and a courtship song that follows once a female makes contact with a male. Much research has focused on the role of the calling song, but significantly less has looked into the role of the courtship song and mate selection. The courtship song of the Pacific field cricket, Teleogryllus oceanicus, is important in eliciting a proper female mounting response, but whether females prefer certain males over others based on the song itself is unknown. By employing a two day mating tournament, we predicted that the preferred males would have courtship songs that were longer in length with a higher duty cycle (more sound per unit time) and a lower fundamental frequency. The tournament demonstrated that females do in fact base their mating decisions on the courtship song itself, and preferred males have longer courtship songs with a higher duty cycle, but not necessarily a lower frequency. These results are consistent with the idea that the courtship song is potentially conveying information about the quality of the male.