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Sex, shells, and weaponry: Coercive reproductive tactics in the Painted Turtle, Chrysemys picta

<p><strong>Abstract.&nbsp;</strong>Males and females have divergent reproductive interests arising from their unequal investments in offspring. This sexual conflict&nbsp;drives an antagonistic arms-race that influences sex-specific reproductive success. Alternative reproductive tactics are expected in long-lived species for which the reproductive&nbsp;strategy that maximizes mating success could differ across body sizes. The mating strategy of the painted turtle (<em>Chrysemys picta</em>) has been characterized as an elaborate and amiable male courtship display during which males use their elongate foreclaws to stroke females, coupled with female mate choice. Contrary to this long-held understanding,&nbsp;<em>in situ</em>&nbsp;field observations and experimental trials from our long-term study in Algonquin Provincial Park, Canada, demonstrate that males also exhibit an alternative, coercive mating strategy. Males are equipped with sexually-size dimorphic tomiodonts, tooth-like cusps of the beak, as well as a weaponized anterior shell, with which they wound the head and neck of females.&nbsp;Behavioral trials during the breeding periods showed that&nbsp;male reproductive tactics shift from courtship (foreclaw display) to coercion (striking, biting, and forced submergence) across ontogeny, and male size predicts the occurrence and frequency of coercive behavior.&nbsp;We found phenotype-behavior matching whereby small males invest in putatively ornamental foreclaws used for courtship and large males invest in weaponry for coercion, challenging existing knowledge of this well-studied species.&nbsp;As a group with a long evolutionary history and varied mating systems, Testudines are a particularly interesting taxon in which to ask questions about mating system evolution.</p>