Available online at www.sciencedirect.com Male mating tactics in the American rubyspot damselfly: territoriality, nonterritoriality and switching behaviour G. RAIHANI * , M. A. SERRANO-MENESES † & A. CO ´ RDOBA-AGUILAR † *Department of Psychology, University of Bath yDepartamento de Ecologı ´a Evolutiva, Instituto de Ecologı ´a, Universidad Nacional Auto ´noma de Me ´xico (Received 25 January 2007; initial acceptance 19 March 2007; final acceptance 8 November 2007; published online 28 January 2008; MS. number: 9252R) Odonates exhibit a wide range of territorial and nonterritorial mating tactics and are ideal for investigating alternative reproductive behaviours. We studied male mating tactics in the American rubyspot damselfly, Hetaerina americana, a species that exhibits red wing spots that have been suggested to have evolved as a consequence of maleemale contests. In this species mating success is enhanced by the ability of males to defend territories along streams and rivers, which depends on the amount of thoracic fat reserves avail- able. Previous studies on this species have distinguished between territorial and nonterritorial males, in which the former obtain significantly more matings than the latter. In our study, however, we found a third reproductive tactic: switching. Switcher males exhibit both territorial and nonterritorial tactics and a mat- ing success similar to that of territorial and nonterritorial males, although this result may be confounded by the small sample size used for this analysis. We suggest that the different mating tactics may be condi- tion determined: territorial males contained the highest fat reserves, nonterritorial males had the least fat content and switchers had intermediate fat loads. We also show that there were no age differences between males using these tactics. Our results suggest that territorial behaviour is extremely plastic in this species. Finally, we discuss the implications of our study and directions for future work on territorial and nonter- ritorial reproductive tactics in odonates. Ó 2007 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: alternative reproductive behaviours; American rubyspot; Hetaerina americana; sexual selection; territoriality In territorial (T) species, the ability to obtain and sustain a territory is usually linked to an individual’s mating success (Andersson 1994). Not all individuals, however, are able to obtain or hold a territory. This is usually the case in many territorial taxa (e.g. mammals: Rosser 1992; birds: Hiebert et al. 1989; frogs: Roithmair 1992; fish: Taborsky 1994; insects: Wickman 1985), including odo- nates (damsel- and dragonflies) (Corbet 1999), in which some individuals follow alternative reproductive behav- iours (ARBs) to enhance their mating opportunities (e.g. Waage 1973; Forsyth & Montgomerie 1987; Plaistow & Siva-Jothy 1996). Nonterritorial (NT) males, for instance, follow ‘the best of a bad job’ strategy because, despite not securing a territory, males may still gain mating opportuni- ties (e.g. Forsyth & Montgomerie 1987). There is increasing evidence that territorial and nonterritorial behaviours are not fixed traits but rather different reproductive behaviours or tactics that males use to enhance their reproductive pos- sibilities (Austad 1984; Dominey 1984; Taborsky 1994; Gross 1996). A variety of ARBs appear to have arisen in re- sponse to frequency- and condition-dependent selection (Gross 1996). Frequency-dependent ARBs are typically described as mixed evolutionarily stable strategies (Maynard-Smith 1982), which assume that, at certain fre- quencies, the relative fitness of coexisting ARBs in a popula- tion are more or less equal. However, the tactic that an individual adopts may also depend upon some aspects of his/her condition (environmental or physiological) (Dawkins 1980; Gross 1996), such as age, size, etc. Condition-dependent strategies are most likely to exist in Correspondence: G. Raihani, Department of Psychology, 2 South, Claverton Down, University of Bath, BA2 7AY, U.K. (email: pspgr@ bath.ac.uk). M. A. Serrano-Meneses & A. Co ´rdoba-Aguilar are at the Departamento de Ecologı ´a Evolutiva, Instituto de Ecologı ´a, Universidad Nacional Auto ´noma de Me ´xico, Circuito Exterior s/n, Apdo. Postal 70-275, Me ´xico, D.F. 04510, Mexico. 1851 0003e 3472/08/$34.00/0 Ó 2007 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. ANIMAL BEHAVIOUR, 2008, 75, 1851e1860 doi:10.1016/j.anbehav.2007.11.002