title: The shield effect: nuptial gifts protect males against pre-copulatory sexual cannibalism.
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.
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University, Aarhus 8000, Denmark soeren.toft@bios.au.dk.
authors.forename: Søren
authors.identifier: 0000-0002-2839-3921
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Toft
authors.affiliation: Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University, Aarhus 8000, Denmark Laboratorio de Etología, Ecología y Evolución, Instituto de Investigaciones Biológicas Clemente Estable, Montevideo, Uruguay.
authors.forename: Maria J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Albo
mesh_terms: D000374:Aggression; D000818:Animals; D002190:Cannibalism; D005260:Female; D006815:Hunger; D008297:Male; D012726:Sexual Behavior, Animal; D013112:Spiders / Q000502:physiology*
keywords: Araneae; counteradaptations; courtship; sexual conflict; sexual selection