Keywords

Terminal investment, trade off, sexual signal, reproductive effort

Abstract

In order to maximize fitness, individuals must partition their limited resources among competing physiological processes, creating negative statistical associations between processes known as “life-history trade-offs”. Evidence indicates that individuals tend to decrease their reproductive investment when confronted with a significant immunological challenge in order to increase investment in immune defense. This trade-off is often accompanied by a significant decrease in the sexual signal, which provides an honest signal of the male’s infection status to potential mates. However, if individual residual reproductive value is low, they may instead increase their reproductive investment to maximize reproductive success before the end of their life (a.k.a. terminal investment). Here, we investigate the potential for terminal investment in the ground cricket Allonemobius socius by inoculating males with varying dosages of an immune challenge. We predicted that both high dose and advanced male age would induce terminal investment. Furthermore, we predicted that terminally investing males would produce a dishonest signal by increasing their signaling effort. We found that upon infection We found that upon infection, young males and old males differentially alter their reproductive strategy. Young males exhibited the classic deceleration of reproductive effort. However, old males increased their calling song energetics and decreased their parental investment (nuptial gift size), suggesting that old males are dishonestly signaling their condition to the female.

Notes

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Graduation Date

2012

Semester

Spring

Advisor

Fedorka, Kenneth

Degree

Master of Science (M.S.)

College

College of Sciences

Department

Biology

Degree Program

Biology

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0004529

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0004529

Language

English

Release Date

November 2012

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

Subjects

Dissertations, Academic -- Sciences, Sciences -- Dissertations, Academic

Included in

Biology Commons

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