Abstract
Insects adapt commonly to seasonally changing habitats and reproductive contexts. Individuals that mature at different times during the year can show patterns of life cycle or morphological variation, possibly associated with changes in reproductive behaviour. Concerning mating strategies of flying insects, wing morphology may be related both to the outcome of male–male contests and to the ability in acquiring females. Therefore, different mating strategies (territorial vs. non-territorial) may have different flight morphology optima that increase fitness in their context. Males of Calopteryx splendens are mainly territorial early in the season, but with the advancing season and with increasing competition, more and more males adopt a non-territorial pursuing strategy. Given that different mating tactics have different wing morphologies, here we test whether the wing shape of males shifts from a “territorial” to a “non-territorial morphology” during the season. So, early in the season males show highly sexually dimorphic wings, which allow for high manoeuvrability and larger spots, while late in the season wing shapes of males become less sexually dimorphic and more suitable when pursuing females. Additionally, we studied the seasonal variation of other flight related traits, specifically wing lengths, abdomen length and weight. We found that these latter traits decreased along the season in both sexes without altering sexual dimorphism. However, wing shape, which resulted sexually dimorphic, showed a seasonal variation, decreasing the level of sexual dimorphism. The most probable determinant of this change is phenotypic plasticity triggered by environmental cues, but other explications of the observed pattern are discussed.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to thank Elisa Riservato for her support and for the suggestions about the sampling site, and for her help and advice during the sampling. Also, thanks go to Fabio Pupin for the help during the field work. We want to thank also two anonymous reviewers that helped us to improve the manuscript.
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This study was partially supported by a PhD grant of the University of Pavia to M.M.G.
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Gallesi, M.M., Mobili, S., Cigognini, R. et al. Season matters: differential variation of wing shape between sexes of Calopteryx splendens (Odonata: Calopterygidae). Zoomorphology 135, 313–322 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00435-016-0309-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00435-016-0309-8