It is often assumed that males do not choose among females because competition for partners is high and male mating costs are low. Nevertheless, this assumption does not always hold. In some species duration of copulation is long, possibly causing a limitation on the lifetime number of matings for males. In this case we expect…
In sexual conflict, males are often thought to gain fitness benefits from harassing females over mating. Yet when harassment itself incurs costs to males and if alternative, receptive females are available in a local population, theory predicts that when confronted with a female refusal, a male’s choice of persisting or retreating is determined in part by the likelihood of achieving a mating.
Regulation of thoracic muscle temperature has been investigated in a number of dragonfly species but is poorly known in the large and diverse family, Gomphidae. Moreover, temperatures of other body regions have been recorded in very few ectothermic insects. In addition, correlations among multiple components of thermoregulatory behavior have rarely been examined quantitatively. Here I…
Although the endemic damselfly, Platycnemis subdilatata Selys, 1849, is widespread in the Maghreb, many aspects of its reproductive behaviour, biology and ecology are still unstudied. One particular feature of this species is that its coloration pattern continues to change during maturation and afterwards, which makes it a good model for assessing age effects on behavioural…
Recent findings suggest that postmating prezygotic isolation (i.e. gametic barriers) could be an important factor preventing hybrid formation. Competitive gametic barriers emerge when a female is inseminated by a conspecific and a heterospecific male. We examined whether sperm proportions after double matings and copulation duration impede hybrid formation. For this, we used females of Ischnura…