ArticleBiology letters2016
The shield effect: nuptial gifts protect males against pre-copulatory sexual cannibalism.
Article in Biology letters, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 3 papers.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
3 citing papers in PubMed.
- Ultimate sacrifice or opportunistic foraging?: The selective forces behind sexual cannibalism: The selective forces behind sexual cannibalism.EMBO reports · 2023Article
- Male opportunistic mating increases with intensity of female sexual cannibalism in 3 web-building spiders.Current zoology · 2022Article
- Male coercion and female injury in a sexually cannibalistic mantis.Biology letters · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Several not mutually exclusive functions have been ascribed to nuptial gifts across different taxa. Although the idea that a nuptial prey gift may protect the male from pre-copulatory sexual cannibalism is attractive, it has previously been considered of no importance based on indirect evidence and rejected by experimental tests. We reinvestigated whether nuptial gifts may function as a shield against female attacks during mating encounters in the spider Pisaura mirabilis and whether female hunger influences the likelihood of cannibalistic attacks. The results showed that pre-copulatory sexual cannibalism was enhanced when males courted without a gift and this was independent of female hunger. We propose that the nuptial gift trait has evolved partly as a counteradaptation to female aggression in this spider species.
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