Understanding the link between sexual selection, sexual conflict and aging using crickets as a model

Archer, C. Ruth; Hunt, John

doi:10.1016/j.exger.2015.06.017

Cited by 18 publications

(13 citation statements)

References 123 publications

(132 reference statements)

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“…Males might not always manage to avoid a dietary mediated trade-off between survival and reproductive rates. For males to fertilize ova they often need to outcompete their rivals, court females via energetically expensive displays and transfer functional sperm and seminal fluid (Hosken et al 2019;Archer and Hosken 2021). Each of these reproductive traits may be optimised on different nutritional blends.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Of those linking nutrition and reproduction, few assay males, and those that do seldom capture a significant proportion of male reproductive costs (Moatt et al 2016). That is, to reproduce males must attract mates and fertilise their ova, often against a backdrop of intense male-male competition both before and after mating (Hosken and House 2011;Archer and Hosken 2021). Few dietary restriction studies assay how nutrition affects this full spectrum of male reproductive behaviours, and as a result, apparent sex-differences in the magnitude of dietary restriction impacts on reproduction may be an artefact of experimental design rather than a genuine biological signal (Moatt et al 2016).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…fecundity in mated females), but use proxy measures of male reproductive effort. For example in field crickets calling effort is frequently used as a measure of male reproduction (Archer and Hunt 2015 ). Such proxies only provide a snapshot of how diet affects male reproductive investment and do not assess copulation and ejaculation costs, which can represent a major portion of male reproductive effort (Martin and Hosken 2004 ; Brown et al 2009 ).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Mapping sex differences in the effects of protein and carbohydrates on lifespan and reproduction in Drosophila melanogaster: is measuring nutrient intake essential?

et al. 2022

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Understanding how diet affects reproduction and survival is a central aim in evolutionary biology. Although this relationship is likely to differ between the sexes, we lack data relating diet to male reproductive traits. One exception to this general pattern is Drosophila melanogaster, where male dietary intake was quantified using the CApillary FEeder (CAFE) method. However, CAFE feeding reduces D. melanogaster survival and reproduction, so may distort diet-fitness outcomes. Here, we use the Geometric Framework of Nutrition to create nutrient landscapes that map sex-specific relationships between protein, carbohydrate, lifespan and reproduction in D. melanogaster. Rather than creating landscapes with consumption data, we map traits onto the nutrient composition of forty agar-based diets, generating broad coverage of nutrient space. We find that male and female lifespan was maximised on low protein, high carbohydrate blends (~ 1P:15.9C). This nutrient ratio also maximised male reproductive rates, but females required more protein to maximise daily fecundity (1P:1.22C). These results are consistent with CAFE assay outcomes. However, the approach employed here improved female fitness relative to CAFE assays, while effects of agar versus CAFE feeding on male fitness traits depended on the nutrient composition of experimental diets. We suggest that informative nutrient landscapes can be made without measuring individual nutrient intake and that in many cases, this may be preferable to using the CAFE approach. The most appropriate method will depend on the question and species being studied, but the approach adopted here has the advantage of creating nutritional landscapes when dietary intake is hard to quantify.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Mapping sex differences in the effects of protein and carbohydrates on lifespan and reproduction in Drosophila melanogaster: is measuring nutrient intake essential?

et al. 2022

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“…In the wild, these generalist omnivorous eat foliage, seeds and seedlings and also cannibalize one another [ 30 ]. Crickets are an excellent model for examining the link between reproduction, aging and lifespan [ 31 ] because reproductive effort can be easily measured in both sexes. In females, reproductive effort can be measured by counting eggs while in males, it can be quantified through measuring how long males spend calling to attract a mate.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Testing the Effects of DL-Alpha-Tocopherol Supplementation on Oxidative Damage, Total Antioxidant Protection and the Sex-Specific Responses of Reproductive Effort and Lifespan to Dietary Manipulation in Australian Field Crickets (Teleogryllus commodus)

et al. 2015

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The oxidative stress theory predicts that the accumulation of oxidative damage causes aging. More generally, oxidative damage could be a cost of reproduction that reduces survival. Both of these hypotheses have mixed empirical support. To better understand the life-history consequences of oxidative damage, we fed male and female Australian field crickets (Teleogryllus commodus) four diets differing in their protein and carbohydrate content, which have sex-specific effects on reproductive effort and lifespan. We supplemented half of these crickets with the vitamin E isoform dl-alpha-tocopherol and measured the effects of nutrient intake on lifespan, reproduction, oxidative damage and antioxidant protection. We found a clear trade-off between reproductive effort and lifespan in females but not in males. In direct contrast to the oxidative stress theory, crickets fed diets that improved their lifespan had high levels of oxidative damage to proteins. Supplementation with dl-alpha-tocopherol did not significantly improve lifespan or reproductive effort. However, males fed diets that increased their reproductive investment experienced high oxidative damage to proteins. While this suggests that male reproductive effort could elevate oxidative damage, this was not associated with reduced male survival. Overall, these results provide little evidence that oxidative damage plays a central role in mediating life-history trade-offs in T. commodus.

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“…Several theories have been put forth to explain how such sex differences might have evolved, including those that invoke sex differences in extrinsic hazard exposure (Williams 1957), in sex chromosome inheritance (Tower 2006), or in parental care behavior (Allman et al 1998). However, attention is increasingly being paid to the role played by sexual conflict in the evolution of sex differences in the aging process (Maklakov and Lummaa 2013;Adler and Bonduriansky 2014): males and females may maximize fitness through different reproduction and survival schedules, and these sex-specific life history optima may be shaped by antagonistic interactions between the sexes (e.g., Archer and Hunt 2015;Travers et al 2015). Detailed study of species with sexually dimorphic patterns of senescence may therefore yield important insights into the aging process, such as the roles played by sex-specific patterns of selection and intersexual genetic constraints.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Unexpected sex‐specific post‐reproductive lifespan in the free‐living nematodePristionchus exspectatus

Weadick

Sommer

2016

Evolution and Development

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Patterns of senescence (or aging) can vary among life history traits and between the sexes, providing an opportunity to study variation in the aging process within a single species. We previously found that females of the nematode Pristionchus exspectatus outlive males by a substantial margin under laboratory conditions. Here, we show that sex-specific reproductive senescence unfolds in the opposite direction in this species, resulting in a prolonged period of female-specific post-reproductive survival: females lost the ability to reproduce at approximately 4.7 weeks despite a median lifespan of about 12.3 weeks under lab conditions, whereas males lost the ability to reproduce at approximately 6.6 weeks, roughly in line with their median lifespan of around 7.6 weeks. Interestingly, somatic senescence (declining crawling speed) only explained reproductive senescence in males, whereas females lost the ability to reproduce regardless of condition. However, we found that housing females with males significantly increased their mortality rate, indicating that female-specific post-reproductive survival is unlikely to occur in the wild. We discuss our results in light of evolutionary theories of post-reproductive survival and previous studies of nematode behavioral ecology, arguing that premature reproductive senescence may stem from sex-specific condition-dependent survival during the reproductive period. Given the proven lab tractability of Prisitonchus nematodes, our findings provide a foundation for integrative research that combines evolutionary ecology and molecular genetics in the study of sex-specific senescence and post-reproductive survival.

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Understanding the link between sexual selection, sexual conflict and aging using crickets as a model

Cited by 18 publications

References 123 publications

Mapping sex differences in the effects of protein and carbohydrates on lifespan and reproduction in Drosophila melanogaster: is measuring nutrient intake essential?

Mapping sex differences in the effects of protein and carbohydrates on lifespan and reproduction in Drosophila melanogaster: is measuring nutrient intake essential?

Testing the Effects of DL-Alpha-Tocopherol Supplementation on Oxidative Damage, Total Antioxidant Protection and the Sex-Specific Responses of Reproductive Effort and Lifespan to Dietary Manipulation in Australian Field Crickets (Teleogryllus commodus)

Unexpected sex‐specific post‐reproductive lifespan in the free‐living nematodePristionchus exspectatus

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