Field crickets change mating preferences using remembered social information

Abstract

Plasticity in female mate choice can fundamentally alter selection on male ornaments, but surprisingly few studies have examined the role of social learning in shaping female mating decisions in invertebrates. We used the field cricket Teleogryllus oceanicus to show that females retain information about the attractiveness of available males based on previous social experience, compare that information with incoming signals and then dramatically reverse their preferences to produce final, predictable, mating decisions. Male ornament evolution in the wild may depend much more on the social environment and behavioural flexibility through learning than was previously thought for non-social invertebrates. The predictive power of these results points to a pressing need for theoretical models of sexual selection that incorporate effects of social experience.

Figure 1.

Graphical representation of a male T. oceanicus calling song.

Figure 2.

(a) Population-wide preference function for Kauai females visualized using a cubic spline. (b) A gradient constructed using the same method, describing how a female's attraction to the constant reference playback depends on the attractiveness of the song she heard previously. Dashes represent 1 standard error.