TY  - JOUR
KW  - Saccharomyces cerevisiae
KW  -  body size
KW  -  cell size
KW  -  mate choice
KW  -  mating
KW  -  sexual selection.
ID  - discovery1426014
N2  - In unicellular organisms like yeast, mating with the right partner is critical to future fitness because each individual can only mate once. Because cell size is important for viability, mating with a partner of the right size could be a significant advantage. To investigate this idea, we manipulated the size of unmated yeast cells and showed that their viability depended on environmental conditions; large cells do better on rich medium and small cells do better on poor medium. We also found that the fitness of offspring is determined by the size of their parents. Finally, we demonstrated that when a focal cell of one mating type was placed with a large and a small cell of the opposite mating type, it was more likely to mate with the cell that was closer to the optimum size for growth in a given environment. This pattern was not generated by differences in passive mating efficiency of large and small cells across environments but by competitive mating behavior, mate preference, or both. We conclude that the most likely mechanism underlying this interesting behavior is that yeast cells compete for mates by producing pheromone signals advertising their viability, and cells with the opportunity to choose prefer to mate with stronger signalers because such matings produce more viable offspring.
TI  - Size and competitive mating success in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae.
EP  -  327
AV  - public
Y1  - 2014/03/07/
JF  - Behav Ecol
A1  - Smith, C
A1  - Pomiankowski, A
A1  - Greig, D
SN  - 1045-2249
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/beheco/art117
N1  - © The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the
International Society for Behavioral Ecology.
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and
reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

PMCID: PMC3945744
IS  - 2
SP  - 320 
VL  - 25
ER  -