Abstract
The adult males of the manure-inhabiting predatory mite,Macrocheles muscaedomesticae, mounted on the backs of pharate female deutonymphs and guarded them from other males for several hours until female emergence and ensuing copulation. I assumed that an adaptive significance of such characteristic precopulatory mate guarding behavior was closely related to inter-male sperm competition. An existence of 2 sexually compatible strains having different esterase isozyme patterns were found through polyacrylamidegel electrophoresis. A double copulation experiment utilizing these patterns as genetic markers was conducted. In 410 F1 progeny from doubly copulated mothers examined, 409 daughters were fathered by the first males, and only 1 was fathered by the second male (F1 males were eliminated because of the arrhenotokous sex determination system). These results seem to indicate that males ofM. muscaedomesticae guard the immature females in order to secure virgin individuals to mate with.
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Contribution No. 221 from Lab. Entomol., Kyoto Pref. Univ.
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Yasui, Y. Sperm competition ofMacrocheles muscaedomesticae (Scopoli) (Acarina: Mesostigmata: Macrochelidae), with special reference to precopulatory mate guarding behavior. J. Ethol. 6, 83–90 (1988). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02350872
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02350872