This book “Cryptic Female Choice in Arthropods” provides a comprehensive and up to date look into research from the last few decades on Cryptic Female Choice (CFC) in arthropods. This book is built around research from a variety of experts in the field who together build a book structured around key behavioural, ecological and evolutionary questions in regards to specific taxonomic groups of arthropods, such as, spiders, harvestmen, flies, moths, crickets, earwigs, beetles, eusocial insects along with shrimp and crabs. Being published this year (2015) has lead to the most up to date research in the field, with major breakthroughs looked at throughout on particular taxa, in taxon specific chapters, as well offering new ideas into this often-controversial
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This chapter is co-authored by Maydianne Andrade and Emily MacLeod and revolves around the mechanisms and social context of Cryptic Female Choice in Black Widow spiders. The chapter begins by introducing similar ideas to the previous chapter encompassing how difficult it is to distinguish between types of post-copulatory sexual selection, and Andrade and MacLeod suggest that the Latrodectus genus may be beneficial in understanding and determining the relationships between each hypothesis. A clear, well structured, and well-referenced introduction to the natural history and biology of the Latrodectus genus follows, that sets up the idea that the variation between Latrodectus species may be key in understanding the relationship between CFC and other post-copulatory mechanisms. Key experimental findings suggest that females are able to bias paternity towards particular males rather than rejecting males outright, which is harmful, as virgin females have reduced longevity, providing evidence that females may be cryptically choosing there mates potentially through either the effectiveness of sperm plugs or likelihood of sperm storage. With only seven of the thirty odd species having their reproductive behaviour studied, further evidence is needed to support and provide a greater understanding of …show more content…
Eberhard. They use some of the behavioural anomalies in these species to look at how females affect paternity such as how females actively participate in creating copulatory plugs as well as physical clasping by the female rather than the male during copulation. They present evidence that female Leucage individuals have powerful effects on whether copulation will occur, when it will end, whether a mating plug will be formed and whether the male will survive the encounter arguing that several male traits, such as modified chelicerae, likely evolved from sperm competition and CFC. This chapter does a particularly good job of giving a breakdown into why some of the female influence is likely to be explained by CFC rather than any of the alternative hypothesis but again it is clear that further research is needed in this genus also, as this evidence comes from only two
This chapter is co-authored by Maydianne Andrade and Emily MacLeod and revolves around the mechanisms and social context of Cryptic Female Choice in Black Widow spiders. The chapter begins by introducing similar ideas to the previous chapter encompassing how difficult it is to distinguish between types of post-copulatory sexual selection, and Andrade and MacLeod suggest that the Latrodectus genus may be beneficial in understanding and determining the relationships between each hypothesis. A clear, well structured, and well-referenced introduction to the natural history and biology of the Latrodectus genus follows, that sets up the idea that the variation between Latrodectus species may be key in understanding the relationship between CFC and other post-copulatory mechanisms. Key experimental findings suggest that females are able to bias paternity towards particular males rather than rejecting males outright, which is harmful, as virgin females have reduced longevity, providing evidence that females may be cryptically choosing there mates potentially through either the effectiveness of sperm plugs or likelihood of sperm storage. With only seven of the thirty odd species having their reproductive behaviour studied, further evidence is needed to support and provide a greater understanding of …show more content…
Eberhard. They use some of the behavioural anomalies in these species to look at how females affect paternity such as how females actively participate in creating copulatory plugs as well as physical clasping by the female rather than the male during copulation. They present evidence that female Leucage individuals have powerful effects on whether copulation will occur, when it will end, whether a mating plug will be formed and whether the male will survive the encounter arguing that several male traits, such as modified chelicerae, likely evolved from sperm competition and CFC. This chapter does a particularly good job of giving a breakdown into why some of the female influence is likely to be explained by CFC rather than any of the alternative hypothesis but again it is clear that further research is needed in this genus also, as this evidence comes from only two