Females don't fall for flashy males

In the marine world, attracting a mate can be really tricky. A new study on three-spined stickleback fish has found that females do not always trust males who emit strong sexual signals.

Three-spined stickleback is a species of fish in which breeding males develop a red throat in order to attract females. Sticklebacks can breed several times over the course of the summer, but pay a heavy price since few survive for another year.

Now, in the study, evolutionary biologists, from Glasgow and Exeter universities, found "initial flashy displays" by males were not always successful at attracting a mate.

The study said some females waited until sexual signals were more honest as weaker males exhausted themselves with "shows" they could not sustain, reports The BBC.

Lead researcher Dr Jan Lindström found that the honesty of mating displays could vary dramatically over time.

Dr Lindström said: "Honesty in males mostly depends on how many opportunities there are to breed.

"If males can breed now but the future promises little in terms of further matings, all males should immediately reveal their ''true colours'' - so that the signals they produce are a reliable indication of their quality.

"But if males can potentially breed several times over the course of a breeding season, it pays those in best condition to keep some of their strength in reserve.

"In contrast, those males in poorer condition cannot afford to delay seeking a mate, so must signal as hard as they can - with the result that at the start of the breeding season a female cannot reliably judge a male''s quality from his signal.

"However, as time goes on, the poorer condition males must drop out of the competition, leaving only the better ones and making it easier for a female to pick a high quality mate."

Dr Lindström added: "We found that the redness of the males changed over the summer, with all starting out red but only those in good condition being able to sustain their colour.

"As predicted by our model, females seemed to ignore the redness of a male when choosing a mate in early summer, and only developed a preference for redder males later, once it became a more honest signal of a male''s quality."

The study will be published in the scientific journal, American Naturalist.

Females don't fall for Flashy males

In the marine world, attracting a mate can be really tricky. A new study on three-spined stickleback fish has found that females do not always trust males who emit strong sexual signals.

Three-spined stickleback is a species of fish in which breeding males develop a red throat in order to attract females. Sticklebacks can breed several times over the course of the summer, but pay a heavy price since few survive for another year.

Now, in the study, evolutionary biologists, from Glasgow and Exeter universities, found "initial flashy displays" by males were not always successful at attracting a mate.

The study said some females waited until sexual signals were more honest as weaker males exhausted themselves with "shows" they could not sustain, reports The BBC.

Lead researcher Dr Jan Lindström found that the honesty of mating displays could vary dramatically over time.

Dr Lindström said: "Honesty in males mostly depends on how many opportunities there are to breed.

"If males can breed now but the future promises little in terms of further matings, all males should immediately reveal their ''true colours'' - so that the signals they produce are a reliable indication of their quality.

"But if males can potentially breed several times over the course of a breeding season, it pays those in best condition to keep some of their strength in reserve.

"In contrast, those males in poorer condition cannot afford to delay seeking a mate, so must signal as hard as they can - with the result that at the start of the breeding season a female cannot reliably judge a male''s quality from his signal.

"However, as time goes on, the poorer condition males must drop out of the competition, leaving only the better ones and making it easier for a female to pick a high quality mate."

Dr Lindström added: "We found that the redness of the males changed over the summer, with all starting out red but only those in good condition being able to sustain their colour.

"As predicted by our model, females seemed to ignore the redness of a male when choosing a mate in early summer, and only developed a preference for redder males later, once it became a more honest signal of a male''s quality."

The study will be published in the scientific journal, American Naturalist.

Males who serenade females get more Sex

Females of an Asian species of water strider keep their genitalia hidden to avoid any forceful copulation attempts, and expose them only after males produce a courtship "song" by tapping the water surface, according to a study.

The study by Chang Seok Han and Piotr Jablonski at Seoul National University, Korea, found that females evolve a morphological shield to protect their genitalia from an approaching male.

It is already known that the mechanisms for the way Darwinian natural selection, acts separately on males and females, result in different traits in males than in females.

However, at times, a behavioural trait, such as mating frequency, depends on both the male and the female characteristics.

In many animals, including humans, natural selection favours higher mating frequency in males than in females, which leads to an evolutionary "arms race" where males evolve adaptations that force females to mate, while females evolve defences against males'' attempts.

In the study, it was observed that females of an Asian species of water striders, Gerris gracilicornis, win the evolutionary race by evolving a morphological shield behind which their genitalia are hidden from males, protecting them against the males'' forceful attempts to mate.

Thus, in response to the female adaptation, after the violent mounting onto the female''s back (typical in water striders), males of this species produce courtship signals by tapping the water surface with their middle legs.

And only after receiving the male''s "song" that the females expose their genitalia for copulation.

The study has been published in the open-access, peer-reviewed journal PLoS one.