Keeping up appearances: male fiddler crabs wave faster in a crowd
Keeping up appearances: male fiddler crabs wave faster in a crowd
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保持形象：雄性招潮蟹在人群中挥手速度更快
作者：
R. Milner;M. Jennions;P. Backwell
求偶展示通常在能量和时间上都是昂贵的，而且对捕食者来说非常显眼。因此，选择应该有利于最大限度地降低求爱成本同时保持或增加信号吸引力的信号策略。招潮蟹的雄性会通过挥舞一只巨大的爪子来向雌性求爱，这是一种非常显眼和昂贵的展示。在这里，我们调查求偶的男性是否调整他们的波率，因此求偶的成本，目前的竞争水平。我们发现，显示率增加竞争的增加，当竞争被删除，男性减少其显示率的30%.These结果表明，男性招潮蟹积极降低成本的求爱，调整其波率在竞争的即时水平。
Courtship displays are often energetically and temporally costly as well as highly conspicuous to predators. Selection should therefore favour signalling tactics that minimize courtship costs while maintaining or increasing signal attractiveness. In fiddler crabs, males court females by waving their one greatly enlarged claw in a highly conspicuous and costly display. Here, we investigate whether courting males adjust their wave rate, and therefore the cost of courtship, to the current level of competition. We show that display rate increases as competition increases and that when competition is removed, males reduce their display rate by 30 per cent. These results suggest that male fiddler crabs actively reduce the cost of courtship by adjusting their wave rate in response to the immediate level of competition.