Post-copulatory fitness- mating effects on female receptivity and
productivity
To test whether sexual perception could lead to altered female remating
behaviour (mediated by the differential transfer of accessory gland
proteins; Hopkins et al. , 2019), we monogamously housed 135
females (71 treatment females and 64 control females) with a standard
virgin male (4 days old) and monitored remating latency over a period of
8 hours. This was done on the day following the initial mating. We
discarded successfully remated females (i.e. at least 10 minutes long
copulation) and isolated females that had failed to mate. The next day,
we presented these unmated females to another standard virgin male, in a
new vial, for up 8 hours. We ran remating trials for 4 successive days
(i.e. starting 24h, 48h, 72h and 96 hours after the end of the first
mating), after which a large proportion of the females had remated (110
out of 135, over 4 days). Females that did not remate following these 4
days were discarded, but accounted for in the remating latency analyses
(right-censored, see below). When calculating remating latency over many
days, the time between two remating trials was not included; i.e.
maximum remating latency over 4 days was therefore 8 hours * 4 remating
trials = 32 hours (1920 minutes).
We also monitored daily reproductive output of 135 focal females (71
treatment females and 64 control females) over the 7 days following the
initial mating, in order to assess whether sexual perception could lead
altered female immediate reproductive output (mediated via accessory
gland proteins transferred within the seminal fluid). Following the
initial mating, we flipped females into new vials every day in order to
obtain a daily measure of female early-life reproductive output. Past
seven days, we flipped females into new vials every 3-4 days until
natural death. We incubated vacant vials for 15 days to allow F1
offspring emergence (average generation time being ca. 10 days), after
which we froze them at ca. -20°C for later counting. Given that females
only mated once, female lifetime reproductive success could serve as an
indicator of the number of sperm transferred by experimental males
(female-exposed or control males).