Developmental Nutrition Affects the Structural Integrity of a Sexually Selected Weapon

Abstract

Males in many species engage in physical combat over access to mates, and sexual selection has led to the evolution of weapons to enhance contest performance. The size of these often-elaborate structures is known to be exquisitely sensitive to nutrition. However, we know very little about the degree to which nutrition affects other attributes of animal weapons that can be crucial to fighting. In this study, we investigated the impact of natural dietary variation on weapon structural integrity in a fighting insect, Narnia femorata (Hemiptera: Coreidae). Males in this species display their enlarged, spiny hind legs to other males, and these legs serve as weapons in aggressive physical contests where they are used to strike and squeeze opponents. N. femorata feeds on the fruit of prickly pear cactus and sets up territories on this plant. In North Central Florida the prickly pear Opuntia mesacantha ssp. lata blooms and begins to produce fruits in April and May. N. femorata has multiple, overlapping generations while the green fruits slowly ripen over the next several months. We examined insects reaching adulthood at two nearby time points in this range, June and July, to test the influence of the nutrition provided by ripening green cactus fruit on weapon size and its ability to resist puncture. We also raised insects on cactus with red, ripe fruit for comparison. We found a striking effect of cactus fruit phenology on weapons. Insects raised with the more mature green fruit (those in the second cohort) had 71% larger weapon area and 4.4 times greater puncture resistance than those raised on the early green fruit (those in the first cohort). In contrast, insects raised on red, ripe fruit were moderate in size, had high puncture resistance, and they changed little phenotypically from the first to second cohort. Increased structural integrity of the hind femur weapon was associated with the increased body size that came with better nutrition. This pattern highlights that cuticle thickness increased or its material properties changed when weapons were larger. Importantly, effects of nutrition on puncture resistance also transcended size. Insects of the same size had greater structural integrity if they received superior nutrition. Sexually selected weapons are often used as visual signals to conspecifics before fights, and this work hints that the size of the weapons may be a poor signal of weapon performance when nutrition is variable.