Received: 10 March 2017 | Revised: 19 April 2017 | Accepted: 24 April 2017 DOI: 10.1002/ece3.3152 ORIGINAL RESEARCH Polyandry enhances offspring viability with survival costs to mothers only when mating exclusively with virgin males in Drosophila melanogaster Sergio Castrezana1,3 | Brant C. Faircloth1 | William C. Bridges4 | Patricia Adair Gowaty1,2,3 1Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Los Angeles, Abstract Los Angeles, CA, USA A prominent hypothesis for polyandry says that male–male competitive drivers induce 2 Institute of the Environment and males to coerce already- mated females to copulate, suggesting that females are more Sustainability, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA likely to be harassed in the presence of multiple males. This early sociobiological idea 3Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, of male competitive drive seemed to explain why sperm- storing females mate multi- Washington, DC, USA ply. Here, we describe an experiment eliminating all opportunities for male–male be- 4Department of Mathematical Sciences, Clemson University, Clemson, SC, havioral competition, while varying females’ opportunities to mate or not with the USA same male many times, or with many other males only one time each. We limited each Correspondence female subject’s exposure to no more than one male per day over her entire lifespan Patricia Adair Gowaty, Department of Ecology starting at the age at which copulations usually commence. We tested a priori predic- and Evolutionary Biology, University of California, Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA, USA. tions about relative lifespan and daily components of RS of female Drosophila mela- Email:
[email protected] nogaster in experimental social situations producing lifelong virgins, once- mated Funding information females, lifelong monogamous, and lifelong polyandrous females, using a matched- NSF IOS Grant # 1121797 to PAG provided treatments design.