Official websites use. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites. Sexual cannibalism is a well-known example for sexual conflict and has many facets that determine the costs and benefits for the cannibal and the victim. Here, I focus on species in which sexual cannibalism is a general component of a mating system in which males invest maximally in mating with a single monogyny or two bigyny females.
Sexual cannibalism can be a male strategy to maximize paternity and a female strategy to prevent paternity monopolization by any or a particular male.
Considerable variation exists between species 1 in the potential of males to monopolize females, and 2 in the success of females in preventing monopolization by males. This opens up exciting future possibilities to investigate sexually antagonistic coevolution in a largely unstudied mating system. The killing and consumption of mates is an ultimate example of sexual conflict.
Females are usually the cannibals, and males are the victims. But different evolutionary pressures produce different kinds of sexual cannibalism. This contradiction of traditional sex roles may be one reason why the phenomenon of sexual cannibalism has intrigued naturalists for a long time. In the context of sexual conflict, sexually cannibalistic behavior of females is a harmful trait, and antagonistic traits are expected to evolve in males, which can be considered the reverse of most other examples in which females respond to male harm see Perry and Rowe I will discuss potential antagonistic traits to sexual cannibalism in males but will also show that the above view is too simplistic when it comes to spider mating systems characterized by very low male mating rates.
It is important to note that there are different kinds of sexual cannibalism based on very different evolutionary scenarios Elgar and Schneider ; Prenter et al.
