Connecting pre- and post-mating episodes of sexual selection in Photinus greeni fireflies

Photinus fireflies use bioluminescent courtship signals making them ideal organisms to study sexual selection. When more than one male was courting a single female, I examined the relationship between male and female courtship behaviors, male morphological traits, and mating success in P. greeni fireflies. Males that elicited more female responses went on to mate successfully with that female. However, there was no significant difference in male morphological traits between successfully mated and unsuccessful males.; I documented male P. greeni flash variation and female preference for specific flash characteristics. Field-recorded P. greeni males varied in their inter-pulse interval; however, this signal characteristic was not correlated with male spermatophore mass. Females tested in the laboratory with an artificial flash generator preferred shorter interpulse intervals and pulse durations.; Interspecific comparisons showed that monandrous and polyandrous Photinus species differed in male reproductive allocation. As predicted, males in the monandrous P. collustrans allocated the least to sperm production and to accessory glands compared to the polyandrous species P. ignitus and P. greeni. Comparison between years indicated that under favorable conditions for larval growth, male P. greeni traded-off body size and total absolute reproductive allocation.; I examined whether a P. greeni male's courtship attractiveness and his subsequent paternity success were positively correlated. P. greeni males that were more attractive to females in courtship showed significantly lower paternity success, suggesting sexual conflict over fertilizations. Differences in paternity success were not related to male weight, testes mass or male accessory gland mass, or to variation in female spermathecal size.; I examined sperm storage and viability in two firefly species, Photinus greeni and P. ignitus. For both Photinus species, sperm from male seminal vesicles showed significantly higher viability compared to sperm from the primary spermatheca. In single mated P. greeni females, sperm taken from the secondary spermatheca showed significantly higher viability compared to sperm from the primary spermatheca. This sperm viability difference was not evident in double mated females.; Previous studies on Photinus fireflies have examined courtship behaviors; however these studies did not examine this in conjunction with post-mating processes. The studies presented here examine both pre- and post-mating episodes of sexual selection in P. greeni fireflies to give an integrated view of sexual selection episodes in P. greeni fireflies.