| Abstract: | Organisms allocate resources to reproduction in response to the costs and benefits of current and future reproductive opportunities. According to the differential allocation hypothesis, females allocate more resources to high-quality males. We tested whether a fish species lacking parental care (zebrafish, Danio rerio) expresses male size-dependent differential allocation in monogamous spawning trials. In addition, we tested whether reproductive allocation by females is affected by previous experience of different-quality males, potentially indicating plasticity in mate choice. To that end, females were conditioned to large, small or random-sized males (controls) for 14 days to manipulate females'' expectations of the future mate quality. Females showed a clear preference for large males in terms of spawning probability and clutch size independent of the conditioning treatment. However, when females experienced variation in male size (random-sized conditioning treatment) they discriminated less against small males compared to females conditioned to large and small males. This might suggest that differential allocation and size-dependent sexual selection is of less relevance in nature than revealed in the present laboratory study. |
