Female preference for multi-modal courtship: multiple signals are important for male mating success in peacock spiders.

ABSTRACT: A long-standing goal for biologists has been to understand how female preferences operate in systems where males have evolved numerous sexually selected traits. Jumping spiders of the Maratus genus are exceptionally sexually dimorphic in appearance and signalling behaviour. Presumably, strong sexual selection by females has played an important role in the evolution of complex signals displayed by males of this group; however, this has not yet been demonstrated. In fact, despite apparent widespread examples of sexual selection in nature, empirical evidence is relatively sparse, especially for species employing multiple modalities for intersexual communication. In order to elucidate whether female preference can explain the evolution of multi-modal signalling traits, we ran a series of matin

SUBMITTER: Girard MB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4685782 | biostudies-literature | 2015 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature