Females receive a life-span benefit from male ejaculates in a field cricket

Mating has been found to be costly for females of some species because of t oxic products that males transfer to females in their seminal fluid. Such m ating costs seem paradoxical, particularly for species in which females mat e more frequently than is necessary to fertilize their eggs. Indeed, some s tudies suggest that females may benefit from mating more frequently. The ef fect of male ejaculates on female lift: span and lifetime fecundity was exp erimentally tested in the variable field cricket, Gryllus lineaticeps. In f ield crickets, females will mate repeatedly with a given male and mate with multiple males Females that were experimentally mated either repeatedly or multiply lived more than 32% longer than singly mated females. In addition , multiply mated females produced 98% more eggs than singly mated females. Because females received only sperm and seminal fluid from males in the exp erimental matings. these life-span and fecundity benefits may result from b eneficial seminal fluid products that males transfer to females during mati ng. Mating benefits rather than mating costs may be common in many animals, particularly in species where female mate choice has a larger effect on ma le reproductive success than does the outcome of sperm competition.