When sex is so rapid, evolution favours multiple matings with any individual encountered.
The female cobalt milkweed beetle has been recorded mating up to 60 times, but was disqualified by Cabrera-Mireles because this figure included multiple matings with the same male.
We think that females responding to the possibility of multiple matings with the delay of oviposition are under positive selection if the possible benefit of increasing genetic diversity in progeny outweighs the cost of delayed and reduced fecundity.
Multiple matings have been reported in females from some tubuliferan species, either repeated matings with the same males (e.g., Elaphrothrips tuberculatus (Hood), Hoplothrips pedicularius (Haliday), and H. karnyi (Hood)) (Crespi 1986, 1988a, b) or multiple matings with different males (e.g., Dunatothrips aneurae Mound) (Gilbert and Simpson 2013).
Despite the cost of mating, multiple matings of females, most often with different males but also with the same male, have been widely reported in diverse animals (Arnqvist and Nilsson 2000).
The results from that study indicated that while species with mating systems that include multiple copulations by males has no evolutionary impact on relative brain size, mating systems with multiple matings by females do influence brain size evolution.
In addition, the cost to females of mating, multiple matings, and male harassment to females was evaluated.
However, benefits of multiple matings are likely to decline with number of males owing to sampling effects, that is, additional matings will only marginally contribute with genes of better quality [2], unless postcopulatory mate-choice, such as cryptic female choice and sperm competition, is extremely effective [5].
In populations with five or fewer sex determining alleles, multiple matings are favoured because females that mate more than once may have higher than average fitness [50].
SOLAR is a computer package based on the variance-component method that performs linkage analyses for quantitative traits in pedigrees of arbitrary size and complexity, and was applicable to this study's large, complex pedigree with inbreeding loops and multiple matings.
However, if female morphs differ in the amount of reproductive reserves, such as in Ischnura denticollis and Enallagma novahispaniae see [ 38], then the costs of multiple matings would be higher in the morph with the lower resources.
