Brown William D, Wideman Julie, Andrade Maydianne C B, Mason Andrew C, Gwynne Darryl T
Department of Zoology, Erindale College, University of Toronto, Mississauga, Ontario, L5L 1C6, Canada.
Evolution. 1996 Dec;50(6):2400-2411. doi: 10.1111/j.1558-5646.1996.tb03627.x.
The calling song of male crickets, including Oecanthus nigricornis (Walker), attracts females for mating and provides a model system of sexual communication. We give the first conclusive identification of a feature of cricket song that is both attractive to females and indicates a phenotypic feature (body size) that determines male mating success and female reproductive benefits. We do this by first testing for correlations between song characteristics and aspects of male phenotype that are hypothesized to indicate male quality. We show that song is a reliable indicator of male size and male age, and that large male size is associated with increased female fecundity. We then use playbacks of synthetic songs that mimic natural variation in song parameters to study song preferences and we compare preferences under different presentation regimes to determine whether choices are based on relative song quality or some fixed criterion. Females show a preference for the lower frequency songs produced by large males, but only during simultaneous playbacks. Thus female choice is based on the relative quality of calls that can be sampled simultaneously. These results provide strong support for the hypothesis that females use variation in calling song to assess male mate quality.
雄性蟋蟀（包括黑角露螽（沃克））的求偶鸣叫会吸引雌性前来交配，并提供了一个性交流的模型系统。我们首次确凿地识别出蟋蟀鸣叫的一个特征，该特征既对雌性具有吸引力，又表明了一种表型特征（体型大小），这种表型特征决定了雄性的交配成功率和雌性的繁殖益处。我们首先通过测试鸣叫特征与假定为表明雄性质量的雄性表型方面之间的相关性来做到这一点。我们表明，鸣叫是雄性体型大小和年龄的可靠指标，并且大型雄性体型与雌性繁殖力的提高相关。然后，我们使用模拟鸣叫参数自然变化的合成鸣叫回放来研究鸣叫偏好，并比较不同呈现方式下的偏好，以确定选择是基于相对鸣叫质量还是某些固定标准。雌性对大型雄性发出的较低频率鸣叫表现出偏好，但仅在同时回放时如此。因此，雌性的选择基于可以同时采样的鸣叫的相对质量。这些结果为雌性利用求偶鸣叫的变化来评估雄性配偶质量这一假设提供了有力支持。
