Female spiders ignore condition-dependent information from nuptial gift wrapping when choosing mates Maria J. Albo a, b, * , Søren Toft a , Trine Bilde a a Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark b Laboratorio de Etología, Ecología y Evolución, Instituto de Investigaciones Biológicas Clemente Estable, Montevideo, Uruguay article info Article history: Received 1 May 2012 Initial acceptance 29 May 2012 Final acceptance 27 June 2012 Available online 17 August 2012 MS. number: 12-00329 Keywords: female preference gift wrapping male condition Pisaura mirabilis In many species, condition-dependent secondary sexual traits are important for female choice. In the spider Pisaura mirabilis, males offer females a nuptial gift (prey wrapped in silk) during courtship. Gift construction may involve high costs for males, and those in low condition invest less time and silk in wrapping the prey. We investigated how male condition and gift wrapping affect male reproductive success and whether females use the wrapped gift as an honest indicator of male condition. We experimentally manipulated male condition (satiated and starved males) and gift wrapping (well- and poorly wrapped gifts) and carried out experiments in a fully factorial design. We found that males in good condition were more successful in obtaining matings and obtained longer copulations than males in poor condition. In contrast, gift wrapping did not affect female mate choice. Only good-condition males obtained offspring. Gift wrapping is an honest indicator of male condition, but in spite of this females did not use this information in mate choice. We argue that because gift wrapping mainly functions to promote male interests, good-condition males would also be better at cheating the female, for example using wrapping to hide a worthless gift. Females should therefore evolve to ignore the wrapping information and instead base their mate choice decision on male traits that unequivocally benefit their own reproductive success. Our results are consistent with this prediction, as females discriminated males based only on their actual feeding condition, and this choice provided them with direct reproductive benefits. Ó 2012 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. The ‘handicap hypothesis’ explains how secondary sexual traits, such as ornaments or behaviours, can be costly and honest signals for mate choice (Zahavi 1975; Zahavi & Zahavi 1997). Several examples verify that only males in good condition can efficiently perform and maintain their signals during courtship and mating; as a result males in poor condition are often rejected by females and suffer reduced reproductive success (Mappes et al. 1996; Andrade & Mason 2000; Ahtiainen et al. 2002; Kotiaho 2002; Engqvist & Sauer 2003; Hunt et al. 2004; Engels & Sauer 2006; Lomborg & Toft 2009). Condition-dependent secondary sexual traits may be influenced by food acquisition, as shown in the spider Schizocosa ocreata in which hair tufts on the front tibia are negatively affected by a low-quality individual diet (Uetz et al. 2002; Hebets et al. 2008). The tufts are an important part of the visual signal during courtship, and females preferentially select males with well-developed tufts (Uetz et al. 2002; Hebets et al. 2008). Similarly, only males in good feeding condition can maintain high rates of abdominal ‘drumming’ during courtship in the spider Hygrolycosa rubrofasciata (Mappes et al. 1996) indicating high energetic costs of drumming (Kotiaho et al. 1998). As a result females prefer the most actively drumming males (Parri et al. 1997). In the gift-giving spider Pisaura mirabilis, gift construction is affected by male feeding condition (Albo et al. 2011a). The nuptial gift consists of prey wrapped in silk and is constructed when males perceive sexual stimuli as contact pheromones associated with the female silk (Nitzsche 1988; Albo et al. 2011a). In this system, females prefer males that offer a nuptial gift during courtship and those males experience the highest reproductive success (Stålhandske 2001; Prokop 2006; Bilde et al. 2007). Sexual selec- tion for producing nuptial gifts forces males in poor condition to construct a gift, but this behaviour is constrained and performed inefficiently, as these males spend less time and less silk in prey wrapping than good-condition males (Albo et al. 2011a). Silk wrapping has an important function for males: it facilitates male handling and control over the gift as it allows the male a better grasp of the gift compared with an unwrapped insect (Andersen et al. 2008). A well-wrapped gift reduces the risk of the female running away with it before sperm transfer is completed. In * Correspondence: M. J. Albo, Laboratorio de Etología, Ecología y Evolución, Instituto de Investigaciones Biológicas Clemente Estable, Avenida Italia 3318, Montevideo, Uruguay. E-mail address: maria.albo@biology.au.dk (M. J. Albo). Contents lists available at SciVerse ScienceDirect Animal Behaviour journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/anbehav 0003-3472/$38.00 Ó 2012 The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2012.07.014 Animal Behaviour 84 (2012) 907e912