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Cryptic Female Choice and Nuptial Prey Gifts in a Spider Model

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Cryptic Female Choice in Arthropods

Abstract

Reproduction is composed by a series of strategies performed by each sex in order to gain control over the outcome of the entire process. Males’ attempts to fertilize the females may deal with a hidden factor: the cryptic female choice , which is the females’ ability to control fertilization based on males’ sexual performance. A particular kind of reproductive strategy adopted by males of several invertebrate orders involves the transfer of substances or materials during the courtship and/or copulation, also known as nuptial gifts (NG). At least nine spider families have representatives that rely on the transfer of NG, all of them classified as oral gifts. Given its appeal in broad areas of behavioral ecology, NG received great attention in terms of their role in determining the outcome of sexual interactions, but little effort was applied toward the integrate analysis of the entire courtship/copulatory process. NGs are obviously just a stage of the entire mate choice process, and the empirical data available supports the idea of sexual conflict. However, I defend that only an integrated analysis will allow us to understand if NG does play some role as a source of information for cryptic female choice, or if it still remains as a way that males found to mitigate the sexual conflict issues.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Cryptic male choice definition would be analogous to CFC, but in relation to strategic sperm allocation by the male in each mating event.

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Acknowledgments

Thanks to the editors for their invitation to contribute to the volume, and to Maria Jose Albo and Karim Vahed for valuable comments on the chapter. The writing of this chapter was supported by the Fondo para la Investigación Científica y Tecnológica—FONCyT (Argentina, FONCYT 2010-0906), and by the Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior—CAPES (Brazil, PNPD 20132737).

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  1. Instituto de Diversidad y Ecología Animal/CONICET, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Córdoba, Argentina

    Luiz Ernesto Costa-Schmidt

  2. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Biologia, Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos/UNISINOS, São Leopoldo, Brazil

    Luiz Ernesto Costa-Schmidt

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Correspondence to Luiz Ernesto Costa-Schmidt .

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  1. Instituto de Diversidad y Ecología Animal, CONICET—Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Cordoba, Argentina

    Alfredo V. Peretti

  2. Laboratorio de Etología, Ecología y Evolución, Instituto de Investigaciones Biológicas Clemente Estable, Montevideo, Uruguay

    Anita Aisenberg

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Costa-Schmidt, L.E. (2015). Cryptic Female Choice and Nuptial Prey Gifts in a Spider Model. In: Peretti, A., Aisenberg, A. (eds) Cryptic Female Choice in Arthropods. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-17894-3_6

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