Centre for Evolutionary Biology, School of Biological Sciences, The University of Western Australia, Crawley 6009, Australia.
Biol Lett. 2024 Sep;20(9):20240141. doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2024.0141. Epub 2024 Sep 4.
Sexual conflict is widespread among sexually reproducing organisms. Phenotypic plasticity in female resistance traits has the potential to moderate the harm imposed by males during mating, yet female plasticity has rarely been explored. In this experiment, we investigated whether female seed beetles invest more in immunocompetence, measured as phenoloxidase (PO) capacity, when exposed to cues signalling a greater risk of sexual conflict. Risk perception was manipulated by housing focal individuals alone or with a companion as developing larvae, followed by exposure to a mating-free male- or female-biased social environment when adults. We predicted that females exposed to cues of increased sexual conflict would have increased PO capacity. However, PO capacity did not differ between either larval or adult social treatments. Our results suggest that females may not perceive a risk to their fitness on the basis of increased male presence or are unable to adjust this aspect of their phenotype in response to that risk.
性冲突在有性繁殖的生物中广泛存在。雌性抵抗特性的表型可塑性有可能减轻雄性在交配过程中造成的伤害，但雌性的可塑性很少被探索。在这项实验中，我们研究了当暴露于信号性冲突风险增加的线索时，雌性种子甲虫是否会在免疫能力上投入更多，免疫能力用酚氧化酶（PO）能力来衡量。风险感知通过在幼虫期将焦点个体单独或与同伴一起饲养来操纵，然后在成虫期暴露于无交配的雄性或雌性偏置的社会环境中。我们预测，暴露于增加性冲突线索的雌性会增加 PO 能力。然而，PO 能力在幼虫或成虫社会处理之间没有差异。我们的结果表明，雌性可能不会根据雄性存在的增加来感知对其适应性的风险，或者无法根据这种风险来调整其表型的这一方面。
