Female promiscuity is a pervasive selective force on male reproductive traits, and the strength of sexual selection is predicted to influence the trade-off between lifespan and reproduction. In species where sexual selection is intense, males are predicted to invest in sexual strategies that shorten their lifespan, potentially resulting in female-biased sexual dimorphism in longevity. However, comparative analyses have provided contrasting results, potentially due to the use of broad mating system categories or sexual size dimorphism as a proxy for sexual selection. Here, we used female remating rate (i.e. female promiscuity) as a more direct measure of sexual selection strength and conducted a phylogenetic comparative analysis of the relationship between female remating rate and sexual dimorphism in lifespan in 29 species of Drosophila. We did not find strong evidence that female remating rate was correlated with sexual dimorphism in lifespan. However, we found that male and female lifespans are positively correlated among species and that phylogeny and residual variance (i.e. variation in non-phylogenetic factors) are important in determining female remating rate, male and female lifespans separately, and the correlation between male and female lifespan. We suggest that variation in the nature of sexual competition and variation between studies could account for some of the unexplained variation among species in the relation between female remating rate and sexual dimorphism in lifespan.
Keywords: ageing; disposable soma; female promiscuity; lifespan; longevity; phylogeny; remating rate; trade-off.
© 2021 European Society for Evolutionary Biology.