This timely book revisits cryptic female choice in arthropods, gathering detailed contributions from around the world to address key behavioral, ecological and evolutionary questions. The reader will find a critical summary of major breakthroughs in taxon-oriented chapters that offer many new perspectives and cases to explore and in many cases unpublished data. Many groups of arthropods such as spiders, harvestmen, flies, moths, crickets, earwigs, beetles, eusocial insects, shrimp and crabs are discussed.
Sexual selection is currently the focus of numerous and controversial theoretical and experimental studies. Selection in mating and post-mating patterns can be shaped by several different mechanisms, including sperm competition, extreme sexual conflict and cryptic female choice. Discrimination among males during or after copulation is called cryptic female choice because it occurs after intromission, the event that was formerly used as the definitive criterion of male reproductive success and is therefore usually difficult to detect and confirm. Because it sequentially follows intra- and intersexual interactions that occur before copulation, cryptic female choice has the power to alter or negate precopulatory sexual selection. However, though female roles in biasing male paternity after copulation have been proposed for a number of species distributed in many animal groups, cryptic female choice continues to be often underestimated. Furthermore, in recent years the concept of sexual conflict has been frequently misused, linking sexual selection by female choice irrevocably and exclusively with sexually antagonistic co-evolution, without exploring other alternatives.
The book offers an essential source of information on how two fields, selective cooperation and individual sex interests, work together in the context of cryptic female choice in nature, using arthropods as model organisms. It is bound to spark valuable discussions among scientists working in evolutionary biology across the world, motivating new generations to unveil the astonishing secrets of sexual biology throughout the animal kingdom.
Alfredo Vicente Peretti is Principal Researcher of the Consejo Nacional deInvestigaciones Científicas y Técnicas de la Argentina, Instituto de Diversidad y Ecología Animal (CONICET -IDEA) and Associate Professor of the Departamento de Diversidad Biológica y Ecología, Facultad de Ciencias Exactas Físicas y Naturales, Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina. His research on arachnids started in 1991 and initially focused on reproductive behavior in scorpions. His main areas of research are sexual selection, communication and evolution of genitalia in arthropods.
Anita Aisenbergis Assistant Professor of the Laboratorio of Etología, Ecología y Evolución, of the Instituto de Investigaciones Biológicas Clemente Estable, Montevideo, Uruguay and she is member of the Sistema Nacional de Investigadores (ANII) and the Programa de Desarrollo de Ciencias Básicas (PEDECIBA), Uruguay. Since 2002 she has been working on spider behavior. Her main interests are relatedto sexual selection, reproductive behavior and evolution of sex roles.
Cryptic Female Choice and Other Types of Post-Copulatory Sexual Selection.- Potential for CFC in Black Widows (Genus Latrodectus): Mechanisms and Social Context.- Cryptic Female Choice Within the Genus Argiope: A Comparative Approach.- Post-Copulatory Sexual Selection in Two Tropical Orb-Weaving Leucauge Spiders.- Copulatory and Post-Copulatory Sexual Selection in Haplogyne Spiders, With Emphasis on Pholcidae and Oonopidae.- Cryptic Female Choice and Nuptial Prey Gifts an a Spider Model.- Male and Female Mate Choice in Harvestmen: General Patterns and Inferences on the Underlying Processes.- Cryptic Female Choice in Crustaceans.- Female Choice in Damselflies and Dragonflies.- What is Indirect Cryptic Female Choice? Theoretical Considerations and an Example from a Promiscuous Earwig.- Cryptic Female Choice in Crickets and Relatives (Orthoptera: Ensifera).- Sexual Selection Within the Female Genitalia in Lepidoptera.- Whos Zooming Who? Seminal Fluids and Cryptic Female Choice in Diptera.- An Integrative View of Postcopulatory Sexual Selection in a Soldier Fly: Interplay Between Cryptic Mate Choice and Sperm Competition.- Species-Specific Behavioral Differences in Tsetse Fly Genital Morphology and Probable Cryptic Female Choice.- Evaluating Cryptic Female Choice in Highly Promiscuous Tribolium Beetles.- Female Choice in Social Insects.- Mating is a GiveAndTake of Influence and Communication Between the Sexes.
