University of California at Davis, California, United States
Abstract: Animals often live in variable environments; thus, a key understudied issue is the correlation between mating outcomes across situations. Do the same males succeed in different situations? What traits explain mating success correlations? Here, we observed mating outcomes in water striders in two social situations (constrained versus free-choice) and used structural equation models to decompose the mating correlation into contributions from body size, behavior, and experience. Male mating success was correlated across social conditions (r = 0.45); male striders that were more successful in one situation were also more successful in another. Body size had little impact on male mating outcomes in either social situation and thus explained little variation (2.2%) in the mating success correlation. A male’s activity/aggression behavioral type, however, was positively related to mating success in both situations, while his tendency to be hyper-aggressive was negatively related to his mating success in each. Together, these behaviors accounted for 17.8% of the mating success correlation. Accounting for mating experience had little effect on behavior and body size effects. In some cases, an individual’s consistent behavior, or personality, can induce correlations in individual mating outcomes, which in turn impacts population-level variation in mating available for sexual selection itself.
