Jamaican Field Cricket Mate Attraction Signals Provide Age Cues

Abstract

Older males often have a mating advantage, either resulting from the fact that they live longer or resulting from the fact that they both live longer and signal this to females. Male field crickets signal acoustically to attract potential mates. Some field cricket mating signals provide cues about male age while others do not. We explored whether male Jamaican field crickets, Gryllus assimilis, mating signals change with age. Our results show that older males produce chirps with longer pulses, more pulses, at higher pulse and chirp rates, and their chirps are both longer and louder than those produced by younger males. Our findings suggest that Jamaican field cricket mating signals provide cues about male age, explaining between 10% and 54% of the variation in signaling traits. Females might be able to use these mating signal differences to distinguish between older and younger mates.

Conceptual Revision and Synthesis of Proximate Factors Associated with Age‐Related Improvement in Reproduction

“…While investigations on the proximate predictors of age-related performance are in their early stages, the information that they may reveal will have broad implications and applications in other fields. For example, the role of age on ornamentation may be underestimated in sexual selection, given the preliminary evidence that mate attraction is not only individual-dependent, but also age-dependent (e.g., Barn Swallow, Lifjeld et al 2011;Bighorn Rams, Ovis canadensis, Coltman et al 2002; Jamaican Field Crickets, Gryllus assimilis, Bertram & Rook 2011). While a particular trait related to mate attraction within a species will reflect individual variation, there are measurable differences in these traits after subadult growth has been completed that are due to age.…”

Causes and consequences of variation in development time in a field cricket

“…Females prefer larger males (Gray, 1997: A . domesticus , Bertram & Rook, 2011: Gryllus assimilis , Deb et al, 2012: Oecanthus henryi ). And larger males produce more offspring (Zeng et al, 2018: Velarifictorus aspersus ).…”

Hearing in Butterflies: Neurophysiological Characterization of the Auditory Afferents in Morpho Peleides (Nymphalidae)

“…However, if the purpose of hearing is conspecific communication then subtle differences in signal characteristics need to be detected. This is important because such differences can encode information about the species or potential mate fitness levels (Bertram and Rook, 2011;Mason and Faure, 2004). In species such as crickets that detect both conspecific signals as well as predatory signals, a larger number of primary auditory afferents are allocated to discriminating the conspecific signals from the predatory signals (Pollack and Imaizumi, 1999).…”

“…Research shows that crickets categorically divide sound frequencies between attractive (<16 kHz) and repulsive sounds (>16 kHz) (Wyttenbach et al, 1996). Additionally, the ability to finely discriminate frequencies allows crickets to identify species conspecifics and also judge the age and fitness level of the caller (Bertram and Rook, 2011;Wagner, 1992). In other insects such as moths, which use their hearing primarily for bat detection, frequency discrimination is not as important.…”