Ejaculate Cost and Male Choice

@article{Dewsbury1982EjaculateCA,
  title={Ejaculate Cost and Male Choice},
  author={Donald A. Dewsbury},
  journal={The American Naturalist},
  year={1982},
  volume={119},
  pages={601 - 610}
}
  • D. Dewsbury
  • Published 1 May 1982
  • Biology
  • The American Naturalist
According to much evolutionary thinking, males of promiscuous species are able to produce quantities of sperm that are virtually unlimited and should be selected to mate indiscriminately with all available females. However, sperm are generally delivered in batches (ejaculates or spermatophores) that may include many millions of gametes. Males are limited with respect to the number of ejaculates they can deliver and the time required to restore depleted reserves. Because ejaculates are a limited… 
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It is concluded that male T.molitor adjust the number of sperm they inseminate according to some perception of the risk of sperm competition, and males subjected to both long‐term and short‐term exposure to potential intrasexual competitors demonstrated the ability to adjust their ejaculate according to socio‐sexual situation.
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It was found that mating males were sensitive to female size and produced larger ejaculates when mating with heavier females, and P. mterpunctella may be selected to exercise modulation of ejaculate size because males invest paternally, sperm for the single reproductive episode are limited, and female fecundity and mating pattern vary between individuals and are associated with body weight.
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Contrary to expectations, it is found that female-stimulated males did not suffer from increased sperm senescence, and these costs are probably minimized by the high level of plasticity associated with this trait, resulting in sperm production being quickly re-adjusted to a new environment.
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It is found that male Adélie penguins (Pygoscelis adeliae) are more likely to transfer sperm during extra–pair copulations than during pair copulations, and that males that engaged in EPC attempts ejaculated less often when copulating with their social partner than males that made no EPCAttempts.
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TLDR
This work developed models in which females adjust their number of allowable matings and males allocate their ejaculate in each mating, which predicts that females mate only once or less than once at an even sex ratio or in an extremely female-biased condition, because of female resistance and sperm limitation in the population, respectively.
Sperm competition and ejaculate economics
TLDR
It is argued that ejaculate economic theory represents a powerful heuristic to explain the diversity in ejaculate traits at multiple levels: across species, across males and within individual males.
Ejaculate expenditures of male crickets in response to varying risk and intensity of sperm competition: not all species play games
TLDR
Assessing the sperm allocation of males held under three levels of apparent interrival competition in three cricket species found variations in facultative sperm allocation, which may be due to interspecific differences in population density, rearing environment, or female mating behavior.
Butterflies tailor their ejaculate in response to sperm competition risk and intensity
  • N. Wedell, P. A. Cook
  • Biology
    Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences
  • 1999
TLDR
It is clear from this study that males are sensitive to factors affecting sperm competition risk, tailoring their ejaculates as predicted by recent theoretical models.
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References

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TLDR
The current study deals with characteristics of various sorts, including characteristics which have clear sexual implications and so relate directly to sexual selection as conceived by Darwin.
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