Sex is costly. It can be time consuming, energetically demanding, and resource depleting. So, it makes sense to choose your mates wisely. Being choosy, however, might not always be for the best, at least not when it comes to sperm allocation in male bottletail squid. New research led by former Honours student Amy Hooper set out to investigate how male squid might allocate sperm to higher quality females after they’ve already mated. Despite being heavily sperm depleted, males were just as eager to mate with any female presented to him, even if she was of much lower quality. The results suggest that even when mating is very costly, social environment may be more important in determining mating strategy. The work was published in Animal Behaviour.
For an example of the press coverage, click here.
