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Behavioral Ecology Advance Access published online on April 13, 2009
Behavioral Ecology, doi:10.1093/beheco/arp046
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Sex allocation and mate choice of selfed and outcrossed Schistocephalus solidus (Cestoda)

Solveig Schjørringa,b

a Department of Evolutionary Ecology, Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Biology, D-24306 Plön, Germany b Natural Environment Research Council Centre for Population Biology, Imperial College London, Silwood Park Campus, Ascot, Berkshire SL5 7PY, UK

Address correspondence to S. Schjørring. E-mail: s.schjorring{at}imperial.ac.uk.


  Abstract

Animals that inbreed regularly under natural conditions may provide valuable information about the evolutionary response of mate choice to an increase in a population's rate of inbreeding. I studied how an individual's inbreeding status affects its criteria of mate choice, as well as its own attractiveness, in a parasite, the hermaphroditic cestode Schistocephalus solidus, which inbreeds under natural conditions. Specifically, I tested whether a cestode's inbreeding status and allocation to reproductive tissue affect its attractiveness to selfed and outcrossed individuals. In a simultaneous choice situation, outcrossed cestodes strongly preferred an outcrossed mating partner over a selfed one, whereas selfed cestodes showed no preference with respect to the partner's inbreeding status. Both selfed and outcrossed cestodes were attracted to partners with a large combined amount of male and female reproductive tissue and with the potential to produce large eggs. I discuss how assortative mating with respect to inbreeding status may have consequences for the maintenance of a genetic load in the population as well as for the maintenance of selfing.

Key words: inbreeding depression, mating system, parasite, selfing, sex allocation, simultaneous hermaphrodite, tapeworm.

Received 4 August 2008; revised 2 December 2008; accepted 6 January 2009.


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