Male Mate Choice In a Polymorphic Damselfly Nehalennia Irene (Hagen)

Male mate choice is a fundamental part of sexual selection. Here I contributed to the work on mate recognition by presenting conspecifics and heterospecifics to Nehalennia irene and Nehalennia gracilis to quantify their ability to recognize mates. I evaluated if inexperienced N. irene show less discrimination between phenotypes than experienced males. I performed high quality scans and colour analysis on thoraxes of all phenotypes to ascertain differences in colour between sites. I measured individual and population level mate preferences to evaluate the current hypotheses explaining sex limited polymorphism in odonates. Results taken together show that both species have difficulty in discriminating between phenotypes and that inexperienced and experienced males react in the same manner to potential mates. Colour analysis indicated there are differences in thorax colour between males, and between gynomorphs and other phenotypes but not between locations. Individual males showed no preferences for a specific morph inconsistent with hypotheses.