Cryptic sexual conflict in gift-giving insects: chasing the chase-away

The chase-away model of sexual selection posits that elaborate male sexual displays arise because they exploit preexisting biases in females' sensory systems and induce females to mate in a suboptimal manner. An essential element of this hypothesis is that such manipulation should quickly lead to female resistance to male displays. Nuptial food gifts may be a frequent conduit by which males attempt to influence the mating behavior of females against females' own reproductive interests. In decorated crickets Gryllodes sigillatus, such inducements come in the form of a spermatophylax, a gelatinous mass forming part of the male's spermatophore and consumed by the female after mating. We conducted experiments in which spermatophylaxes obtained from male G. sigillatus were offered as novel food gifts to females of a non-gift-giving species (Acheta domesticus) having no evolutionary history of spermatophylax consumption. Female A. domesticus that were allowed to consume the spermatophylax took significantly longer to remate than when given no such opportunity. In contrast, when female G. sigillatus were prevented from consuming their partners' nuptial gifts, there was no difference in their propensity to remate relative to females permitted to consume a food gift after mating. These results suggest that the spermatophylax synthesized by male G. sigillatus contains substances designed to inhibit the sexual receptivity of their mates but that female G. sigillatus have evolved reduced responsiveness to these substances.