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Polyandrous females avoid costs of inbreeding

Nature volume 415, pages 71–73 (2002)Cite this article

Abstract

Why do females typically mate with more than one male? Female mating patterns have broad implications for sexual selection1,2, speciation3 and conflicts of interest between the sexes4, and yet they are poorly understood. Matings inevitably have costs5, and for females, the benefits of taking more than one mate are rarely obvious. One possible explanation is that females gain benefits because they can avoid using sperm from genetically incompatible males, or invest less in the offspring of such males6,7. It has been shown that mating with more than one male can increase offspring viability8,9,10,11,12, but we present the first clear demonstration that this occurs because females with several mates avoid the negative effects of genetic incompatibility13. We show that in crickets, the eggs of females that mate only with siblings have decreased hatching success. However, if females mate with both a sibling and a non-sibling they avoid altogether the low egg viability associated with sibling matings. If similar effects occur in other species, inbreeding avoidance may be important in understanding the prevalence of multiple mating.

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Figure 1: Relative hatching success.

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Acknowledgements

We thank B. Riddoch for collecting the original field population. A. Bretman and F. A. Attia for help with experiments, J. Kotiaho for suggestions on experimental design and G. Arnqvist, R. K. Butlin, D. Hosken, L. Rowe, R. Wilson and D. Zeh for comments on the manuscript. This work was supported by a NERC fellowhip to T.T. and a Royal Society fellowship to N.W.

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  1. Ecology and Evolution Group, School of Biology, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT, UK

    Tom Tregenza & Nina Wedell

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  1. Tom Tregenza
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Correspondence to Tom Tregenza.

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Tregenza, T., Wedell, N. Polyandrous females avoid costs of inbreeding. Nature 415, 71–73 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1038/415071a

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