Influence of the operational sex ratio on mutual mate choice in the Jamaican field cricket (<i>Gryllus assimilis</i>): Testing the predictions of the switch point theorem
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract The switch point theorem posits that both sexes should exhibit behavioural flexibility, switching between discriminant and indiscriminate mating, as their perceived demographic conditions change. The theorem also predicts that an individual’s mate choice should be more dependent on its own intrinsic characteristics and ecological conditions than on the exaggerated sexually selected traits possessed by potential mates. To test these predictions, we manipulated the operational sex ratio (OSR), a demographic factor, of adult Jamaican field crickets ( Gryllus assimilis ) under controlled laboratory conditions and evaluated whether the mate choices of females and males were influenced by their social environment, their own body size and the difference in the body size of available potential mates. Body size is under sexual selection in this species, with females preferring larger males and larger males exhibiting repeatable mate choice. We predicted that changes in the OSR should influence the mating behaviour of both sexes, as the OSR determines the probability that an individual will encounter a potential mate. We observed that the OSR affected the flexibility of male, but not female, mate choice. Additionally, the OSR influenced male behaviour, with larger males from the female‐biased OSR taking longer to make a choice than larger males in the male‐biased and even ratio OSR treatments. Mate choice in females was influenced by their intrinsic body size (only large females were choosy) and by the exaggerated traits expressed by potential mates (large females were only choosy when potential mates differed considerably in body size). Collectively, these findings provide partial support for the predictions of the switch point theorem as both sexes exhibited flexible mating decisions, switching from discriminant to indiscriminate mating under varying demographic conditions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".