Female wolf spiders exert cryptic control drastically reducing ejaculate size

Albo, María J.; Costa, Fernando Guilherme Perazzo

doi:10.1111/eth.12640

Cited by 5 publications

(2 citation statements)

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“…Females may for instance delay sexual cannibalism at mating, allowing preferred partners to copulate for longer and therefore transfer more sperm [78]. They can selectively store sperm from preferred males [17,[88][89][90], or dump sperm from their spermathecae [91] to bias paternity outcomes.…”

Section: Paternity Protection and Fertilization Outcomementioning

confidence: 99%

Sperm competition when transfer is dangerous

Tuni

Schneider

Uhl

et al. 2020

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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Aggressive and cannibalistic female spiders can impose strong selection on male mating and fertilization strategies. Furthermore, the distinctive reproductive morphology of spiders is predicted to influence the outcome of sperm competition. Polyandry is common in spiders, leading to defensive male strategies that include guarding, plugging and self-sacrifice. Paternity patterns are highly variable and unlikely to be determined solely by mating order, but rather by relative copulation duration, deployment of plugs and cryptic female choice. The ability to strategically allocate sperm is limited, either by the need to refill pedipalps periodically or owing to permanent sperm depletion after mating. Further insights now rely on unravelling several proximate mechanisms such as the process of sperm activation and the role of seminal fluids. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Fifty years of sperm competition’.

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Section: Paternity Protection and Fertilization Outcomementioning

confidence: 99%

Sperm competition when transfer is dangerous

Tuni

Schneider

Uhl

et al. 2020

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

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“…Taken together, males transfer approximately twice the amount of sperm to females but achieve only a 25% increase in offspring number and no significant increase in total eggs produced. Recent work in the wolf spider Schizocosa malitiosa demonstrated cryptic female choice in sperm use (Albo & Costa, 2017) and it is possible that something similar is happening in P. mira. Regardless, we currently are unclear how double the amount of sperm transferred translates into a 25% increase in offspring number.…”

Section: Insertion Number and Fertilization Successmentioning

confidence: 99%

Increased insertion number leads to increased sperm transfer and fertilization success in a nursery web spider

Anderson

Hebets

2017

Animal Behaviour

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Across animals, a male's fitness is largely dictated by his ability to fertilize eggs; and there exists a plethora of male adaptations associated with increasing fertilization success. In the nursery web spider, Pisaurina mira, males restrain females prior to and during copulation by wrapping them with silk. Previous research demonstrates that copulatory silk wrapping reduces a male's chance of being sexually cannibalized and increases the number of sperm transfer opportunities (termed insertions) that a male can achieve within a mating. While avoiding cannibalism provides an obvious survival benefit to males, the impact of insertion number on male fitness remains unknown. This study tested the hypothesis that increased insertion number realized through copulatory silk wrapping increases (1) the quantity of sperm transferred and (2) fertilization success. To accomplish this, we directly quantified the amount of sperm in male pedipalps (i.e. the male sperm storage organ) before mating and after obtaining one or two insertions. We also, indirectly quantified fertilization success by measuring the number of hatched offspring when males were capable of achieving one versus two insertions within a mating. In support of our hypotheses, we found that males transfer roughly twice the amount of sperm when achieving two insertions compared to one. We additionally found that the amount of sperm transferred is negatively related to female size. In terms of offspring number, females obtaining two insertions had more offspring compared to females obtaining only one insertion. These results show that males achieve a fertilization benefit from increased insertion number, which is obtained through the male behavior of copulatory silk wrapping.

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