Authors: Nicole Stange Bernhard Ronacher
Publish Date: 2012/01/13
Volume: 198, Issue: 4, Pages: 309-318
Abstract
Females of the grasshopper Chorthippus biguttulus invest much more in the offspring than do males As a consequence females are the more selective sex and exert a sexual selection on males by responding to the songs of certain conspecific males while rejecting others What kind of information about the sender may a female obtain from a male’s song in addition to its species identity We searched for correlations between a series of song features and morphometric parameters of individual males In addition also the immunocompetence of males was assessed by implanting small pieces of nylon thread We found significant positive correlations between certain song characteristics and indicators of male size and immunocompetence Thus grasshopper females may—in principle—be able to judge a male’s condition and health from the acoustic signals he producesWe thank Matthias Hennig for technical support and the programs we could use for the recording and analysis of songs Financial support from the DFG Deutsche Forschungsgesellschaft Graduiertenkolleg 837 and SFB 618 and the BCCN Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience 01GQ1001A is acknowledged
Keywords: