Size assortment in Centrobolus Cook, 1897

Size assortment in Centrobolus Cook, 1897

Positive assortative mating or homogamy was a mating pattern and a form of sexual selection in which individuals with similar phenotypes mated with each other more frequently than would be expected under a random mating pattern. I investigated correlations between size measurements in coefficients of variation across sexes, particularly male length versus female width, across ten forest millipede species in the genus Centrobolus, and body size. Male length variation was strongly correlated with female width variation (r= 0.9613, r2=0.9241, n=10, p<0.0000). Male length was related to sexual size dimorphism (r=-0.4641, r2=0.2154, n=22, p=0.029611). There were moderate negative correlations between female size and male length variation (r=-0.5052, r2= 0.2552, n=10, p=0.136545), female size and female width variation (r=-0.5636, r2= 0.3176, n=10, p=0.090167) and male size and female width variation (r=-0.5567, r2= 0.3099, n=10, p=0.095131). This suggested a combination of fecundity selection on female width and male selection on female width.