Precopulatory sexual selection in the seed bug Lygaeus equestris: a comparison of choice and no-choice paradigms

• We investigated sexual selection on male and female morphology in a lygaeid bug.
• We varied the level of choice available to males and females during mating trials.
• We found significant sexual selection on male and female morphology.
• However we found no effect of choice paradigm on the strength of selection.
• The mechanism of mate choice in this species may limit comparison between options.

Mate choice has long been appreciated as a key component of sexual selection. However, how we measure mate choice, both in the field and in the laboratory, remains problematic. Mating preferences may be tested using either no-choice or choice tests, but explicit comparisons between these two experimental paradigms remain limited. It has been suggested that preferences may be stronger in choice tests as they allow simultaneous comparison, and some studies have indeed found stronger mating preferences in choice tests compared to no-choice tests. Here we explicitly tested the effect of experimental choice paradigm on the measurement of sexual selection on male and female morphology in the promiscuous seed bug Lygaeus equestris (Heteroptera, Lygaeidae). We performed mating trials in which we varied the amount of choice presented to each sex, giving four choice treatments: no-choice, male choice, female choice and mutual choice. Overall we found evidence for significant positive directional selection on female body length and stabilizing selection on an overall measure of male body size. However, we found no significant effect of choice paradigm on the patterns of sexual selection for males or females. We suggest this may be because of the method of mate assessment in L. equestris, which appears to be primarily via contact cues, which may limit simultaneous comparison between options.