Erika M. Santana, Glauco Machado, Michael M. Kasumovic

The pre-maturation social environment experienced by females may affect their post-maturation reproductive strategies, including mating preferences and investment in offspring. Whether the pre-maturation social environment also affects other aspects of females’ reproductive strategies, such as the degree of polyandry and post-copulatory decisions, is still an open question. To address this question, we performed laboratory experiments using the cricket Teleogryllus commodus, a highly polyandrous species. Previous studies showed that juvenile females reared in an acoustic environment with recorded male calls with different rates (variable-quality, VQ) are more responsive to high-quality calls than females reared in an environment with recorded male calls with only high rates (high-quality, HQ). We exposed juvenile females to these same two acoustic environments and estimated their degree of polyandry, offspring fitness, and time of spermatophore retention. We found that the juvenile acoustic environment did not change a female’s mating rate, indicating that the higher responsiveness shown in a previous study does not translate into higher degree of polyandry. An increased number of mates reduced offspring fitness, suggesting that there is an optimum number of mates for females. Finally, females from the VQ group retained spermatophores for shorter periods and produced higher quality offspring when mated with high-quality males, suggesting that the pre-maturation acoustic environment interacts with the quality of the males to determine post-copulatory female decisions and eventually offspring fitness. Taken together, our results indicate that both the pre- and post-mating strategies of females are subject to socially induced plasticity.