Obligately silent males sire more offspring than singers in a rapidly evolving cricket population.

ABSTRACT: How sexual traits are gained and lost in the wild remains an important question in evolutionary biology. Pacific field crickets (Teleogryllus oceanicus) in Hawaii provide an unprecedented opportunity to investigate the factors facilitating evolutionary loss of a sexual signal in real time. Natural selection from an acoustically orienting parasitoid fly drove rapid evolution of a novel, silent male morph. While silent (flatwing) males enjoy protection from the fly, they face difficulty attracting mates. We tested how offspring production varies in association with three male attributes affected by the spread of flatwing: wing morph (flatwing or normal-wing), age (flatwings should survive longer than singers) and exposure to calling song during rearing (wild populations with many flatwings l

SUBMITTER: Heinen-Kay JL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6684975 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature