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Do male Trinidadian guppies adjust their alternative mating tactics in the presence of a rival male audience?

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Abstract

Males in polygamous mating systems may inadvertently transmit information regarding their mating preferences to bystanding sexual competitors, thereby permitting bystanders to use this information to enhance their own mating success by copying the mate choice of signallers. If males are at risk of having their mate choice copied and consequently face a higher risk of sexual competition, then selection should favour males that reduce conspicuous mating behaviours in the presence of an audience of sexual competitors. In the current study, we used the Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata), a species that exhibits alternative male mating tactics, to test this sexual competition avoidance hypothesis and the predictions that males would decrease their overall mating effort and exhibit fewer conspicuous courtship displays relative to more inconspicuous sneak mating attempts in the presence of either one or two sexual rivals compared to the absence of any audience. Male guppies significantly reduced their overall mating effort in the presence of increasing numbers of rival audience males. This was reflected in similar monotonic decreases in the frequencies of courtship displays and sneak mating attempts and in the proportional use of courtship displays (relative to sneak mating attempts) across treatments. These findings are consistent with the sexual competition avoidance hypothesis. Our novel results contribute to an increasing body of knowledge showing that the social environment can influence the mating effort and mating decisions of individuals and thus have important implications for sexual selection and evolution.

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Acknowledgments

We thank the Director of Fisheries, Ministry of Agriculture, Land and Marine Resources of Trinidad and Tobago for permission to collect fish from the Upper Aripo River, G.E. Brown and C. Elvidge for assistance with fish collection, I.W. Ramnarine for logistical support in Trinidad, and A. Pilastro and three anonymous reviewers for their constructive comments on the manuscript. This research was supported by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada through a Discovery research grant awarded to J-GJG.

Compliance with ethical standards

The current study was approved by our institutional Animal Care Committee (protocol 8557) and adheres to the animal use and care guidelines of the Canadian Council on Animal Care and thus the laws of Canada.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biology, Carleton University, 1125 Colonel By Drive, Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6, Canada

    Heather L. Auld, Sarah B. Jeswiet & Jean-Guy J. Godin

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  1. Heather L. Auld
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  2. Sarah B. Jeswiet
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  3. Jean-Guy J. Godin
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Correspondence to Heather L. Auld.

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Communicated by A. Pilastro

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Auld, H.L., Jeswiet, S.B. & Godin, JG.J. Do male Trinidadian guppies adjust their alternative mating tactics in the presence of a rival male audience?. Behav Ecol Sociobiol 69, 1191–1199 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-015-1933-x

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