The relative importance of pre- and postcopulatory sexual selection

摘要

Although postcopulatory sexual selection has been widely documented, its relative contribution to overall sexual selection has yet to be measured. Alison Pischedda and William Rice (pp. 2049-2053) estimated the relative importance of pre-and postcopulatory sexual selection in the promiscuous fruit fly Drosophi-la melanogaster. The authors counted the total female mates of each male fruit fly, as well as the proportion of offspring sired by each male. The findings revealed that overall male reproductive success depended nearly as strongly on fertilization success as mating success. However, fertilization success was heavily influenced by the order in which males mated with each female, as the last male to mate with a female sired, on average, more than three-quarters of her offspring.