Mating reduces responsiveness to sexual stimuli in females but not in males

In internally fertilizing species, an individual's mating history (whether they have previously participated in a successful mating interaction) can influence a range of mating behaviours. For example, mating often leads to a reduction in how responsive individuals are to future mating opportunities, especially for females. This fits the prediction of sexual selection theory that unmated individuals should be highly responsive to sexual stimuli to ensure a mating. This has led many researchers to prefer to use only unmated females in mating experiments, to maximize the likelihood that females will respond to sexual stimuli. However, other studies show contrasting results, and this effect has not yet been quantified formally. There is also some evidence that males of some species become less responsive after mating. This means it is unclear how general this behavioural change is, whether it occurs in both sexes, or whether it differs across taxonomic groups. I present a formal meta-analysis of 41 studies and 38 animal (mostly arthropod) species, which confirmed that female responsiveness to future mating opportunities is significantly reduced after mating. However, I found no consistent evidence for such an effect in males. This may be due to the greater mating potential of males compared to females, meaning that males typically benefit from further matings while females do not. I also collate evidence suggesting that most mating experiments probably exclusively use only unmated females. I use this evidence to consider how male and female mating history should influence how we design mating experiments.