High-quality male field crickets invest heavily in sexual display but die young

摘要: Only high-quality males can bear the costs of an extreme sexual display. As a consequence, such are not only more attractive, but they often live longer than average. Recent theory predicts, however, that should sometimes invest so heavily in displays die sooner lower quality males. We manipulated phenotypic field crickets, Teleogryllus commodus, by altering protein content their diet. Here we show nymphs and adult females reared on high-protein diet lived those low-protein In contrast, died diets because invested energy calling during early adulthood. Our findings uphold theoretical prediction relationship between longevity advertisement may be dynamic (that is, either positive or negative), depending local conditions as resource availability. Moreover, caution use proxy for fitness selection studies, suggest avenues future research attractiveness ageing.