Sexual selection in mantis (Parastagmatoptera tessellata): Decision-making mechanisms underlying male mate choice

ROMINA SCARDAMAGLIA; ESTEBAN AVIGLIANO; FABIAN GABELLI; LORENA POMPILIO

Pirenópolis, Brasil.

Congreso; 46TH ANNUAL MEETING OF THE ANIMAL BEHAVIOR SOCIETY; 2009

ANIMAL BEHAVIOR SOCIETY

Recent research has proposed that male mantis (Parastagmatoptera tessellata) are not complicit in cannibalism and that they are able to avoid females based on hunger. We investigate whether male mantis are capable of using environmental clues that provide information regarding the energetic state of females to make their mate choices. In our experiment, twenty males were confronted individually with three choices: a female eating a prey, a female without a prey, and a male eating a prey (as a control for the presence of prey). The prey was a middle size cricket which subjects eat in approximately twenty minutes. The behaviour of the focal males was recorded for six hours. Females were under the same deprivation regime and, in line with previous studies, consuming one cricket did not significantly increase the height of females’ abdomen. Results indicate that male mantis significantly prefer females that were eating a prey (p<0.031). In all cases choices were made after females consumed the whole prey thus suggesting that males are not using the prey as a direct way to avoid being cannibalized by keeping the female busy but as an indicator of the energetic state of females.