Pheromonal Attractions to Particular Males by Female Redback Salamanders (Plethodon Cinereus)

Abstract

An important aspect of the social behavior of a species is the type of mating system that it uses. Interest in mating systems dates back to Darwin (1871), who first recognized the distinction between natural and sexual selection. Mating systems take a variety of forms across taxa, ranging from apparent monogamy (e.g., dik-diks, Madoqua kirkii: Brotherton and Manser, 1997; barn swallows, Hirundo rustica: e.g., Kodric-Brown and Nicoletto,1997) to polygamy (e.g., wood warblers, Phylloscopus sibalatrix: Gyllensten et al., 1990) to promiscuity (many amphibians: e.g., Arnold 1976; Verrell,1989). Mating systems have often been inferred from the social behavior of animals in a given species (e.g., Kodric-Brown and Nicoletto 1997), which can lead to confusion when a species is said to be, for example, “monogamous” Recent advances in genetic techniques have demonstrated that many species of birds formerly thought to be monogamous frequently engage in extra-pair copulations (e.g., Freeman-Gallant,1997).This necessitates distinguishing between an animal’s social mate and its extra-pair mates. To avoid confusion, we shall define “monogamy” in this paper to mean that one male and one female mate exclusively with each other within a given mating season. We shall use the term “social monogamy” following Wickler and Seibt (1983): social monogamy indicates that particular behaviors (excluding copulation) by one individual are preferentially directed toward a specific individual of the opposite sex (the “partner”). In other words, members of a pair direct certain behaviors toward each other and toward no one else, and pair bonds are thus recognizable by this differential behavior.