title: Sexual signalling by females: do unmated females increase their signalling effort?
abstract: Theory predicts that females should invest least in mate searching when young, but increase their effort with age if they remain unmated. Few studies have examined variation in female sexual signalling. Female Dawson's burrowing bees (Amegilla dawsoni) search for males by signalling their receptivity on emergence, but many leave the emergence site unmated and must attract males at feeding sites. Female bees prevented from mating on emergence had more extreme versions of cuticular hydrocarbon profiles that make them attractive to males, lending empirical evidence of adaptive shifts in female mating effort.
authors.affiliation: Centre for Evolutionary Biology, School of Animal Biology, The University of Western Australia, Crawley, Western Australia 6009, Australia leigh.simmons@uwa.edu.au.
authors.forename: Leigh W
authors.initials: LW
authors.lastname: Simmons
mesh_terms: D000819:Animal Communication; D000818:Animals; D001516:Bees / Q000502:physiology*; D005260:Female; D006838:Hydrocarbons / Q000378:metabolism; D012726:Sexual Behavior, Animal; D014904:Western Australia
chemical_list: D006838:Hydrocarbons
keywords: chemical signalling; mate search; solitary bees