DOI: 10.5061/dryad.0cfxpnw5h
title: Environment and mate attractiveness in a wild insect

description: Abstract The role of female choice in sexual selection is well
 established, including the recognition that females choose their mates
 based on multiple cues. These cues may include intrinsic aspects of a
 male’s phenotype as well as aspects of the environment associated with the
 male. The role of the spatial location of a potential mate has been well
 studied in territorial vertebrates. However, despite their role as
 laboratory models for studies of sexual selection, the potential for
 insects to choose their mates on the basis of location has scarcely been
 studied. We studied a natural population of individually tagged crickets
 (Gryllus campestris) in a meadow in Northern Spain. Adults typically move
 between burrows every few days, allowing us to examine how pairing success
 of males can be predicted by the burrow they occupy, independent of their
 own characteristics. We observed the entirety of ten independent breeding
 seasons to provide replication and to determine whether the relative
 importance of these factors is stable across years. We find that both male
 ID and the ID his burrow affect the likelihood that he is paired with a
 female, but the burrow has a consistently greater influence. Furthermore,
 the two factors interact: the relative attractiveness of an individual
 male depends on which burrow he occupies. Our finding demonstrates a close
 interaction between naturally and sexually selected traits. It also
 demonstrates that mate choice studies may benefit from considering not
 only obvious secondary sexual traits, but also more cryptic traits such as
 microhabitat choice.
description: We have monitored the population of G. campestris in our meadow
 in northern Spain (see <em>WildCrickets.org</em>)  since 2006
 (Makai et al., 2020; Rodríguez-Muñoz et al., 2019b; Rodríguez-Muñoz et
 al., 2019c; Rodríguez-Muñoz et al., 2010).  These field crickets have a
 single annual generation; nymphs of both sexes dig burrows in the autumn
 and overwinter in them, emerging to resume foraging and growth in early
 spring (Rodríguez-Muñoz et al., 2011). The first adults appear in our
 meadow in late April, and a few days after becoming adult, males begin to
 call by rubbing their forewings together. This calling attracts females
 (Zuk and Simmons, 1997), but males also move around the meadow
 (Rodríguez-Muñoz et al., 2019d) encountering conspecifics at burrows where
 adults of both sexes spend the vast majority of their time.  Both sexes
 compete for burrows: when two members of the same sex meet at a burrow,
 either one of them immediately leaves, or there is a fight, which is
 followed by the loser leaving.  When members of the opposite sex meet at a
 burrow, fights are very rare; normally either one of them leaves, or the
 pair begin to cohabit at the burrow, frequently mating repeatedly during
 this period (Rodríguez-Muñoz et al., 2011).  After an average of 0.64 ±
 1.44 days (Rodríguez-Muñoz et al., 2019d), one of the pair moves to a
 different burrow.  Males show no signs of attempting to prevent females
 from leaving, suggesting that females remaining at a burrow with a male
 are choosing to do so.  Both sexes typically have multiple mating partners
 throughout their lives (Rodríguez-Muñoz et al., 2010).  Burrows that are
 not occupied by a cricket are rapidly taken over by other invertebrates
 such as spiders and ants; typically an unoccupied burrow will be
 unrecognisable as a burrow within a few days and re-occupation of such
 sites by a cricket is very unusual.  Similarly, burrows do not persist
 from one breeding season to the next. We record
 information about the behaviour of adult crickets by searching for burrows
 at least weekly from February each year until the end of the breeding
 season, when the last adult cricket dies, sometime in July.  Each burrow
 is flagged with a unique number. A few days after emerging as an adult, we
 trap every individual at their burrow and glue a plastic tag onto their
 pronotum.  The tag has a unique 1-2 character code allowing them to be
 visually identified.  By mid to late April, usually before the adults
 start to emerge, we install up to 133 infrared day/night cameras.  The
 cameras use motion activated digital video recording software (i-Catcher,
 i-codesystems.co.uk), to continuously record the activity around the
 entrance to each burrow and store these video recordings on servers housed
 in a building adjacent to the meadow.  Because the number of occupied
 burrows is sometimes greater than the number of cameras, we carry out
 direct daytime observations of burrows that lack a camera every 1-2 days.
 We record the ID of any adult present or whether a nymph is in residence.
 This allows us to accurately record adult emergence dates, even if burrows
 are not directly monitored by video at that particular time (last instar
 nymphs and recently emerged adults rarely move among burrows, so the
 presence of an adult where there was a nymph the day before indicates an
 emergence).  Our analysis covers the years 2006-2016 with the exception of
 2014 (we had not completed detailed video watching for 2014 at the point
 when the analysis for this study was carried out).
description: File is .csv.  We are keen to collaborate in exploiting these
 data so if you have an idea about how to use them please contact us and we
 can provide lots of additional information.