Climate change: temperature rises and mate choice in insects

Climate change, and particularly global temperature rises, could have profound impacts on sexual selection in all ectotherms. Temperature effects on male fertility have been well documented, and these have obvious implications for post-copulatory sexual selection. Less attention has been paid to impacts on mate choice and trait-preference matching and how this could affect population fitness. We review the potential effects of rising temperatures on mate choice in insects. We suggest that there are multiple ways temperature increases could affect mate choice and preference-trait correlations, but the detail and significance of these effects will vary across taxa. Increased temperatures are likely to be stressful and hence to impact condition with knock-on effects for mate choice. Considering climate change as a stressor is likely to provide a valuable conceptual framework within which its effects can be studied.