The roles of life-history selection and sexual selection in the adaptive evolution of mating behavior in a beetle

Although there is continuing debate about whether sexual selection promotes or impedes adaptation to novel environments, the role of mating behavior in such adaptation remains largely unexplored. We investigated the evolution of mating behavior (latency to mating, mating probability and duration) in replicate populations of seed beetles Callosobruchus maculatus subjected to selection on life-history ("Young" vs. "Old" reproduction) under contrasting regimes of sexual selection ("Monogamy" vs. "Polygamy"). Life-history selection is predicted to favor delayed mating in "Old" females, but sexual conflict under polygamy can potentially retard adaptive life-history evolution. We found that life-history selection yielded the predicted changes in mating behavior, but sexual selection regime had no net effect. In within-line crosses, populations selected for late reproduction showed equally reduced early-life mating probability regardless of mating system. In between-line crosses, however, the effect of life-history selection on early-life mating probability was stronger in polygamous lines than in monogamous ones. Thus, although mating system influenced male-female coevolution, removal of sexual selection did not affect the adaptive evolution of mating behavior. Importantly, our study shows that the interaction between sexual selection and life-history selection can result in either increased or decreased reproductive divergence depending on the ecological context.