Hou Zehai, Liu Yunxiang, Wei Songshan, Wei Cong
Key Laboratory of Plant Protection Resources and Pest Management of the Ministry of Education, College of Plant Protection, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, Shaanxi 712100, China.
Beijing Key Laboratory for Forest Pest Control, College of Forestry, Beijing Forestry University, Beijing 100083, China.
Curr Zool. 2021 Jul 28;68(1):103-112. doi: 10.1093/cz/zoab061. eCollection 2022 Feb.
Uncovering mate choice and factors that lead to the choice are very important to understanding sexual selection in evolutionary change. Cicadas are known for their loud sounds produced by males using the timbals. However, males in certain cicada species emit 2 kinds of sounds using respectively timbals and stridulatory organs, and females may produce their own sounds to respond to males. What has never been considered is the mate choice in such cicada species. Here, we investigate the sexual selection and potential impact of predation pressure on mate choice in the cicada Chen. It possesses stridulatory sound-producing organs in both sexes in addition to the timbals in males. Results show that males producing calling songs with shorter timbal-stridulatory sound intervals and a higher call rate achieved greater mating success. No morphological traits were found to be correlated with mating success in both sexes, suggesting neither males nor females display mate preference for the opposite sex based on morphological traits. Males do not discriminate among responding females during mate searching, which may be due to the high energy costs associated with their unusual mate-seeking activity and the male-biased predation pressure. Females generally mate once but a minority of them re-mated after oviposition which, combined with the desirable acoustic traits of males, suggest females may maximize their reproductive success by choosing a high-quality male in the first place. This study contributes to our understanding mechanisms of sexual selection in cicadas and other insects suffering selective pressure from predators.
揭示配偶选择以及导致这种选择的因素对于理解进化变化中的性选择非常重要。蝉以雄蝉用鼓膜发出的响亮声音而闻名。然而，某些蝉种的雄蝉分别用鼓膜和摩擦发声器官发出两种声音，雌蝉可能会发出自己的声音来回应雄蝉。从未有人考虑过这类蝉种中的配偶选择情况。在此，我们研究了陈氏蝉的性选择以及捕食压力对其配偶选择的潜在影响。除了雄蝉有鼓膜外，该蝉种雌雄两性都有摩擦发声器官。结果表明，发出鸣声时鼓膜 - 摩擦发声间隔较短且鸣叫频率较高的雄蝉交配成功率更高。未发现两性的形态特征与交配成功率相关，这表明雌雄两性都不会基于形态特征对异性表现出配偶偏好。雄蝉在寻找配偶时不会区分做出回应的雌蝉，这可能是由于其特殊求偶行为所带来的高能量消耗以及雄性偏向的捕食压力。雌蝉通常交配一次，但少数雌蝉在产卵后会再次交配，再结合雄蝉理想的声学特征，这表明雌蝉可能通过首先选择高质量的雄蝉来最大化其繁殖成功率。这项研究有助于我们理解蝉以及其他遭受捕食者选择压力的昆虫的性选择机制。
