Changes in the activity budget of the fiddler crab Leptuca uruguayensis throughout the reproductive period in temperate estuaries

COLPO, KARINE DELEVATI; REYES JIMÉNEZ, LAURA M.

ZOOLOGY

ELSEVIER GMBH

Año: 2023 vol. 159

0944-2006

Animal reproductive success implies the performance of several behaviours, such ascourting, mate searching, copulation, offspring production and care. These behavioursusually have high energetic and ecological costs. Therefore, to maximise theirreproductive success, animals should make choices throughout their lives, such asdeciding how much energy to invest in different activities, according to their conditionsand needs. In temperate estuaries, the fiddler crab L. uruguayensis has a shortreproductive period, with two synchronous spawning events. Considering thatreproductive behaviours incur high energetic cost to fiddler crabs, we estimated how thisspecies manages its activity budget throughout the reproductive period, to quantify tradeoffsbetween the time spent on reproductive behaviours versus time spent on otheractivities. By analysing videos of females and males recorded in the field at differentmoments of the reproductive period, we observed that pre-copulatory behaviours, such asfemale wandering and male waving were more intense at the beginning of the reproductive period, suggesting that most matings occurred before the first spawningevent but not before the second one. The ecological conditions during the breeding seasonand the individual strategies adopted by males and females mostly determine when andhow much time to spend on courtship behaviours, and behavioural plasticity can beexpected whenever the conditions change. The strategy used by L. uruguayensis forenergy management, females’ ability to store male gametes and environmentaltemperatures might have been the main factors determining the relative time spent incourtship behaviours during the reproductive period.