Monogyny

Monogyny is a specialised mating system in which a male can only mate with one female throughout his lifetime but the female may mate with more than one male. In this system the males generally provide no paternal care. In many spider species that are monogynous, the males have two copulatory organs, which allows them to mate a maximum of twice throughout their lifetime. As is commonly seen in honeybees, ants and certain spider species, a male may put all his energy into a single copulation, knowing that this will lower his overall fitness. During copulation monogynous males have adapted to cause self genital damage or even death to increase their chances of paternity.

Monogyny is one of several mating systems observed in nature, in which a male mates only once; females, however, may mate with multiple males. It is important to emphasize the distinctions between monogyny and polyandry, and monogyny and monogamy. Polyandry is a mating system by which a female mates with more than one male; the male, in turn, can also mate with more than the one female. In a monogamous setting, both male and female consent to having only one mate at any one time and thus mate only with that partner for that time period. Hence, monogyny is sometimes referred to as male monogamy because the male only mates with one female.

The mating system of monogyny is most common in ants, honeybees, and spiders.

In species of ants and honeybees, there is only one female queen who mates with all the males in her colony; the males attend to the queen and mate only with her. There are circumstances, however, where a colony can become queenless, and therefore certain males must adapt to this surrounding in order to increase paternity. In ants and honeybees, there are two different types of monogynous settings. Type A are monogynous, queenright colonies where the queen is the mated female and everyone else is unmated. Type B are monogynous, worker-reproductive colonies where there is no queen but rather there are gamergates, which are mated workers who take on a queen-like role. The queen is normally the only egg producer. However, when a colony becomes queenless, some workers which have intact, undeveloped ovaries may develop them and thus become capable of laying more eggs. So in certain colonies, a singly mated worker called a gamergate reproduces as the functional queen in that colony. These workers are termed "totipotent"; that is, they are able to change and adapt to a different surrounding in which they no longer have a queen.

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