Abstract
Rearing density has profound effects on life-history decisions for develo** organisms because, for example, it can foreshadow the sexual competitive environment potentially experienced in adulthood. Increased sexual competitiveness should favour greater investment in pre- or post-copulatory sexually selected traits such as weaponry or testes, while sexual-signaling traits that attract mates from a long distance should be favoured in low density populations. High density environments should also trigger density-dependent prophylaxis in which individuals increase their investment in immunity. In this study, we experimentally investigated the effect of rearing density on the adult expression of an immunological trait (i.e., melanization response) as well as pre- (i.e., mandible length, harp size) and post-copulatory (i.e., testis size) sexually selected traits in male Gryllus firmus crickets. We found that all morphological traits positively intercorrelated within each environment whereas melanization response was unrelated to any other measured trait. We also found that high-density males produced larger mandibles (weaponry), contrary to expectation, and stronger immunological responses (degree of melanization), in line with expectation, than their low-density counterparts. As predicted, low-density males produced larger harps, a trait involved in sexual signaling. Our results suggest that male G. firmus facultatively partition resources in a manner that maximizes fitness in the environment they expect to encounter as adults.
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Acknowledgements
This study was supported by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) Discovery Grants to CDK and DR as well as by funding from Canada Research Chairs (CDK).
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CDK wishes to thank the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and the Canada Research Chairs program.
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TWW: Designed experiment and collected data. VL: Collected data. DR: Designed experiment. CDK: Designed experiment, analyzed data, wrote manuscript, dealt with all reviewer comments, and manuscript revisions.
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Kelly, C.D., L’Heureux, V., Wey, T.W. et al. Effect of rearing density on the expression of fitness-related traits in male sand field crickets (Gryllus firmus). Evol Ecol 37, 835–846 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-023-10251-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10682-023-10251-7