Females prefer bold males; an analysis of boldness, mate choice, and bacterial resistance in the field cricket gryllus integer

Abstract EN

Recent theory predicts that personality traits contributing to resource intake rates could reflect the individual’s condition-dependent capacity to resist parasites and pathogens.

Since females often prefer mates with strong immune defence, females could potentially gain fitness benefits by using male’s behavioral type (BT) as one mate choice criteria.

We studied if female field crickets base their mate choice on male boldness and if the boldness would predict survival under challenge to opportunist pathogen Serratia marcescens.

In addition, we tested if three different females would prefer the same males.

Boldness did not explain individual’s lifespan in experimental infection.

All the three females preferred one male within pair over the other male in 26.9% of the mate choice tests, but the preferred male varied between the females.

Our results suggest that females show preferences for bold BTs, but that male boldness may not reflect his capacity to resist bacterial pathogens.