TY - JOUR
T1 - Ladies first
T2 - Coerced mating in a fiddler crab
AU - Painting, Christina J.
AU - Splinter, William
AU - Callander, Sophia
AU - Maricic, Tim
AU - Peso, Marianne
AU - Backwell, Patricia R.Y.
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2016 Painting et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
PY - 2016/6/1
Y1 - 2016/6/1
N2 - In some species males increase their reproductive success by forcing females to copulate with them, usually by grasping the female or pinning her to the ground to prevent her from escaping. Here we report an example of males coercing copulation by trapping a female in a confined space. During mate-searching, female Uca mjoebergi fiddler crabs visit males and choose whether or not to enter their burrow for inspection. Males typically enter the burrow first and we found that 71% of females will follow him down and 54% decide to stay and mate. However, some males use an alternative tactic where he will wait for the female to enter the burrow first, after which he traps her inside. Although a significantly lower percentage of females will enter a burrow following this behaviour (41%), upon entry 79% females that enter will become trapped and almost all of these females (90%) produce a clutch of eggs. Our observations suggest that males are able to gain fertilisations from females that may not have remained in the burrow by trapping them and coercing them to mate.
AB - In some species males increase their reproductive success by forcing females to copulate with them, usually by grasping the female or pinning her to the ground to prevent her from escaping. Here we report an example of males coercing copulation by trapping a female in a confined space. During mate-searching, female Uca mjoebergi fiddler crabs visit males and choose whether or not to enter their burrow for inspection. Males typically enter the burrow first and we found that 71% of females will follow him down and 54% decide to stay and mate. However, some males use an alternative tactic where he will wait for the female to enter the burrow first, after which he traps her inside. Although a significantly lower percentage of females will enter a burrow following this behaviour (41%), upon entry 79% females that enter will become trapped and almost all of these females (90%) produce a clutch of eggs. Our observations suggest that males are able to gain fertilisations from females that may not have remained in the burrow by trapping them and coercing them to mate.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84976299781&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1371/journal.pone.0155707
DO - 10.1371/journal.pone.0155707
M3 - Article
SN - 1932-6203
VL - 11
JO - PLoS ONE
JF - PLoS ONE
IS - 6
M1 - e0155707
ER -