Sexual conflict and sexual networks in bed bugs: the fitness cost of traumatic insemination, female avoidance and male mate choice
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Sexual conflict is prevalent among animals and is primarily caused by the fact that the optimal mating rates are often higher in males than in females. While there is a growing appreciation that females can also gain from multiple matings, we still know relatively little about which sex controls the observed mating rates and how close it is to the optimal female mating rates. To address this issue, we tracked female bed bugs ( Cimex lectularius ) inseminated daily versus weekly and found that weekly inseminated females lived longer and produced over 50% more offspring. In a follow-up experiment employing a social network framework, we placed 24 bed bugs into a semi-naturalistic arena and recorded all sexual interactions. While recently inseminated females did not avoid males more often, they were more frequently rejected by males. Finally, we tracked avoidance behaviour in a single cohort of female bed bugs as they received six successive daily inseminations. Avoidance rates increased and insemination durations decreased with increasing number of prior inseminations. Overall, our results indicate high costs of polyandry. Although females possess some plastic avoidance strategies, the observed rates of insemination fall closer to the male rather than female optimum.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 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 source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), 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".