ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2019
Muscle mass drives cost in sexually selected arthropod weapons.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 17 papers.
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Who cites it
17 citing papers in PubMed, 52 citations in OpenAlex.
- Flag-waving behavior in matador bugs is an antipredatory strategy.Current zoology · 2026Article
- Insulin-like peptide has antagonistic pleiotropic effects on male combat traits and survival traits in an armed beetle.The Journal of experimental biology · 2026Article
- Phenotypic Matching Without Genetic Correlation in Dimorphic Legs of Bulb Mites.Ecology and evolution · 2026Article
- Loss of Paired Weapons Leads to Larger Testes and a Lighter Load for Dispersal.Ecology and evolution · 2025Article
- Males armed with big weapons win fights at limited cost in ant-mimicking jumping spiders.Current zoology · 2024Article
- Vertically inherited microbiota and environment-modifying behaviors indirectly shape the exaggeration of secondary sexual traits in the gazelle dung beetle.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Palaeopathological evidence for intraspecific combat in ankylosaurid dinosaurs.Biology letters · 2022Article
- Large and exaggerated sexually selected weapons comprise high proportions of metabolically inexpensive exoskeleton.Biology letters · 2022Article
- Dual function and associated costs of a highly exaggerated trait in a cichlid fish.Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- Article
- It is not always about body size: evidence of Rensch's rule in a male weapon.Biology letters · 2021Article
- Leg loss decreases endurance and increases oxygen consumption during locomotion in harvestmen.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2021Article
- Cybernetic combatants support the importance of duels in the evolution of extreme weapons.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Article
- The hidden cost of sexually selected traits: the metabolic expense of maintaining a sexually selected weapon.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2018Article
- Effects of past mating behavior versus past ejaculation on male mate choice and male attractiveness.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
- Juvenile leg autotomy predicts adult male morph in a New Zealand harvestman with weapon polymorphism.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
11 authors at 7 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Sexually selected weapons often function as honest signals of fighting ability. If poor-quality individuals produce high-quality weapons, then receivers should focus on other, more reliable signals. Cost is one way to maintain signal integrity. The costs of weapons tend to increase with relative weapon size, and thereby restrict large weapons to high-quality individuals who can produce and maintain them. Weapon cost, however, appears to be unpredictably variable both within and across taxa, and the mechanisms underlying this variation remain unclear. We suggest variation in weapon cost may result from variation in weapon composition-specifically, differences in the amount of muscle mass directly associated with the weapon. We test this idea by measuring the metabolic cost of sexually selected weapons in seven arthropod species and relating these measures to weapon muscle mass. We show that individuals with relatively large weapon muscles have disproportionately high resting metabolic rates and provide evidence that this trend is driven by weapon muscle mass. Overall, our results suggest that variation in weapon cost can be partially explained by variation in weapon morphology and that the integrity of weapon signals may be maintained by increased metabolic cost in species with relatively high weapon muscle mass.
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