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Stressful environments favor deceptive alternative mating tactics to become dominant

BACKGROUND: Deceptive alternative mating tactics are commonly maintained at low frequencies within populations because males using them are less competitive and acquire lower fitness than those using dominant tactics. However, the successful invasion of a male deceptive tactic is plausible if decept...

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Autores principales: Albo, Maria J., Pavón-Peláez, Camila, Villar, Mauro Martínez, Buzatto, Bruno A., Tomasco, Ivanna
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10375696/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37501205
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12915-023-01664-5
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author Albo, Maria J.
Pavón-Peláez, Camila
Villar, Mauro Martínez
Buzatto, Bruno A.
Tomasco, Ivanna
author_facet Albo, Maria J.
Pavón-Peláez, Camila
Villar, Mauro Martínez
Buzatto, Bruno A.
Tomasco, Ivanna
author_sort Albo, Maria J.
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Deceptive alternative mating tactics are commonly maintained at low frequencies within populations because males using them are less competitive and acquire lower fitness than those using dominant tactics. However, the successful invasion of a male deceptive tactic is plausible if deception carries no fitness cost to females. Among populations of the gift-giving spider Paratrechalea ornata, males very often offer females a deceptive worthless gift, rather than a nutritive gift. We tested the degree to which deceptive worthless gifts can occur in natural populations living under divergent environmental conditions (moderate and stressful). We examined the plasticity of morphological and behavioral traits and analyzed the fitness of females in relation to the gift type, also examining the paternity acquired by males offering either gift type. RESULTS: We demonstrated that worthless gifts can become dominant under highly stressful environmental conditions (84–100%). Individuals in such environment reach smaller sizes than those in moderate conditions. We suggest that the size reduction probably favors low metabolic demands in both sexes and may reduce the costs associated with receiving deceptive worthless gifts for females. In contrast, males living under moderate conditions varied the use of the deceptive tactic (0–95%), and worthless gifts negatively influenced female fecundity. Furthermore, male size, rather than gift content, positively impacted paternity success in the moderate but not in the stressful environment. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, this is the first empirical evidence that a reversible deceptive tactic can become dominant when the environment becomes harsh and mate choice becomes limited. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12915-023-01664-5.
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spelling pubmed-103756962023-07-29 Stressful environments favor deceptive alternative mating tactics to become dominant Albo, Maria J. Pavón-Peláez, Camila Villar, Mauro Martínez Buzatto, Bruno A. Tomasco, Ivanna BMC Biol Research Article BACKGROUND: Deceptive alternative mating tactics are commonly maintained at low frequencies within populations because males using them are less competitive and acquire lower fitness than those using dominant tactics. However, the successful invasion of a male deceptive tactic is plausible if deception carries no fitness cost to females. Among populations of the gift-giving spider Paratrechalea ornata, males very often offer females a deceptive worthless gift, rather than a nutritive gift. We tested the degree to which deceptive worthless gifts can occur in natural populations living under divergent environmental conditions (moderate and stressful). We examined the plasticity of morphological and behavioral traits and analyzed the fitness of females in relation to the gift type, also examining the paternity acquired by males offering either gift type. RESULTS: We demonstrated that worthless gifts can become dominant under highly stressful environmental conditions (84–100%). Individuals in such environment reach smaller sizes than those in moderate conditions. We suggest that the size reduction probably favors low metabolic demands in both sexes and may reduce the costs associated with receiving deceptive worthless gifts for females. In contrast, males living under moderate conditions varied the use of the deceptive tactic (0–95%), and worthless gifts negatively influenced female fecundity. Furthermore, male size, rather than gift content, positively impacted paternity success in the moderate but not in the stressful environment. CONCLUSIONS: Overall, this is the first empirical evidence that a reversible deceptive tactic can become dominant when the environment becomes harsh and mate choice becomes limited. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12915-023-01664-5. BioMed Central 2023-07-27 /pmc/articles/PMC10375696/ /pubmed/37501205 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12915-023-01664-5 Text en © The Author(s) 2023 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.
spellingShingle Research Article
Albo, Maria J.
Pavón-Peláez, Camila
Villar, Mauro Martínez
Buzatto, Bruno A.
Tomasco, Ivanna
Stressful environments favor deceptive alternative mating tactics to become dominant
title Stressful environments favor deceptive alternative mating tactics to become dominant
title_full Stressful environments favor deceptive alternative mating tactics to become dominant
title_fullStr Stressful environments favor deceptive alternative mating tactics to become dominant
title_full_unstemmed Stressful environments favor deceptive alternative mating tactics to become dominant
title_short Stressful environments favor deceptive alternative mating tactics to become dominant
title_sort stressful environments favor deceptive alternative mating tactics to become dominant
topic Research Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10375696/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37501205
http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12915-023-01664-5
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