Courtship Behaviour in Relation to Female Monogamy in Leptidea sinapis (Lepidoptera)

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Abstract
Courtship in butterflies may serve 2 functions: to ensure conspecific matings, and to provide a mechanism for deciding whether to mate or not once both sexes have recognized the other as being conspecific. Courtship in L. sinapis L. is unique in 2 respects: virgin females always display a mating willingness signal when courted, and courting males are completely non-insistent and never attempt to initiate copulation unless the female has signaled that she is receptive. All male/virgin female encounters resulted in copulation, whereas all male/already mated female courtships ended without mating. In consequence, the females are monogamous. In L. sinapis, female monogamy is argued to be maintained by the females according to the following reasoning: the females can ultimately decide whether or not mating will occur at courtship, monogamy is beneficial to females since it allows maximum time expenditure for locating suitable host plants and male non-insistent courtship is thus neither advantageous nor disadvantageous so long as virgin females are willing to mate once they recognize a courting male as being conspecific.