The effect of temperature on male mating signals and female choice in the red mason bee, Osmia bicornis (L.)

Abstract

Climate change and the resulting changes in air temperature are known to have a major influence on most animals, especially poikilothermic insects, because they depend on the high enough temperatures to function. Previous studies have shown that various signals can be affected by changes in temperature. However, research into the effect of temperature on mating signals and subsequently communication between mates and on female choice is still rare. In the red mason bee, Osmia bicornis, which emerges early in spring and is therefore subject to extensive temperature changes, females choose suitable males based on, among other criteria, their thorax vibrations and odor. So far there has been no research into the effect of temperature changes on these signals. We therefore investigated whether the environmental temperature has an influence on the male's mating signals by measuring vibrations using a laser vibrometer and collecting male and female odor at different temperatures. Furthermore, we performed behavioral experiments in order to show whether there is an effect of temperature‐induced changes and female choice. Our results showed that rejected males differed in their vibrations between the two temperature settings but accepted ones did not. Temperature changes therefore seem to have a stronger effect on those males that are rejected by the females, whereas the accepted males are the ones that can produce desirable signals despite temperature fluctuations. Furthermore, we found that the differences in odor profiles were greater between temperature settings than between the sexes and that females change their preference for odor with temperature. We conclude that temperature strongly influences the male mating signals and therefore may have a major impact on sexual selection in this species. This is an important aspect to consider, not only in future studies on mating behavior, but also in view of our ever raising temperatures.

Ecology of female mating failure/lifelong virginity: a review of causal mechanisms in insects and arachnids

“…Risk of FMF is also affected by abiotic factors as insects respond strongly to the environment (van Baaren & Candolin, ), such as ambient temperature (Westerman & Monteiro, ; Conrad et al., ), rainfall patterns (Ng et al., ), atmospheric pressure changes (Pellegrino et al., ), and anthropogenic light pollution (Altermatt & Ebert, ).…”

Temperature alters multimodal signaling and mating success in an ectotherm

“…Studies examining signal-preference coupling have primarily focused on acoustic/vibratory modalities (Gerhardt 1978;Doherty 1985;Ritchie et al 2001;Greenfield and Medlock 2007;Symes et al 2017), with fewer studies evaluating visual (Michaelidis et al 2006;Allen and Levinton 2014), and electric (Dunlap et al 2000) modalities. However, many animals communicate using signals that involve more than one signaling modality (Partan and Marler 1999) and there has been a dearth of studies that investigate how temperature impacts these multimodal systems (but see Conrad et al 2017). It is likely that abiotic factors such as temperature will impact the way multimodal signals are produced, transmitted, received, and interpreted.…”

Does climate warming influence sexual chemical signaling?

“…For instance, in the mountain lizard Iberolacerta cyreni (Müller & Hellmich, 1937), detectability of male femoral secretions by females was found to be negatively affected by warm temperature (22°C) due to decreased scent durability (Martín & Lopez, 2013). In the red mason bee Osmia bicornis (Linnaeus, 1758), male and female sex-pheromone profiles changed significantly between two temperature regimes (17 and 22°C) (Conrad et al, 2017).…”