Take a chance on me: second mating opportunities in a South American wolf spider

BOLLATTI, FEDRA; AISENBERG, ANITA; PERETTI, ALFREDO VICENTE; PETER, MICHALIK

Christchurch

Simposio; 21 INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS OF ARACHNOLOGY; 2019

Allocosa senex showsreversal in sex roles and size dimorphism, meaning that females search forpartners and start courtship, being the smallest sex. Males should constructburrows, wait for females and be chosen by their partners, while females remainin males? burrows after mating and leave it for spiderling dispersal.Nevertheless, females inside males? burrows may be visited by other males.Males of A. senex can survive tworeproductive seasons, what could determine variations in their mating tacticsregarding the timing in their reproductive period. We aimed to: 1-describemales? sperm production during the reproductive and non-reproductive season;2-evaluate male ability to find mated females inside other males? burrows;3-test female receptiveness to remating. We dissected testes at the beginning,between periods and at endings of the reproductive period. Preliminary resultsshow that males would exhibit smaller testes compared to wolf spiders of similarsize and currently we are analyzing sperm production through light microscopy.For the sexual trials, we exposed mated females located inside the donatedmales? burrows to second males. Males can detect and court mated females(46.7%), while 20% of females accepted remating, revealing that sexual dynamicsin this species is much richer than it was expected.