Ayres Abstracts

Lederhouse, R.C., M.P. Ayres, and J.M. Scriber. 1989. Evaluation of spermatophore counts in studying the mating behavior of Lepidoptera. Journal of the Lepidopterists' Society 43:93-101.
Counts of spermatophores contained by field-collected females have been widely used to investigate mating behavior of Lepidoptera. We present new counts for Papilio glaucus L. females and reanalyze published data for this species to evaluate the often implicit assumptions of this technique. In addition, we relate spermatophore size and sequence to mating history of tiger swallowtail females captured in Wisconsin USA. Number of spermatophores per female increased with both wear class and capture date. Females that received small first spermatophores were significantly more likely to contain one or more additional spermatophores than those that received large first spermatophores. This suggests that more spermatophores per female result from inferior initial matings and not necessarily from male mating preference.
Papilio-glaucus/ Behavior/ Wisconsin/ Papilio

 

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