The Opportunity for Post-Copulatory Sexual Selection in the Ectoparasitic Pea Crab, Dissodactylus primitivus (Brachyura: Pinnotheridae).

ABSTRACT: Pea crabs, Dissodactylus primitivus, inhabit multiple echinoid (heart urchin) hosts. Male and female crabs move among hosts in search for mates, and both sexes mate multiple times, creating opportunities for post-copulatory sexual selection. For such selection to occur, only a fraction of the males who succeed in mating can also succeed in siring progeny. Jossart et al. 2014 used 4 microsatellite loci to document parentage and mating frequencies of both sexes in D. primitivus. From these data we identified the mean and variance in female offspring numbers, as well as the proportions of the female population that were gravid and not bearing offspring. We next identified the proportions of the male population who had (1) mated and sired offspring, (2) mated but failed to sire offspring, and

SUBMITTER: Prather RB 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4689395 | biostudies-literature | 2015

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature