Nuptial gift

A nuptial gift is a material offering, such as a body part, a glandular secretion, or a food item, that a donor gives a recipient during or around mating in order to improve its own reproductive success; the male usually gives the gift, though the reverse also occurs. The spider Pisaura mirabilis is a well studied example: the male courts the female by presenting her with prey wrapped in silk, and mating takes place while she consumes the gift, with gift-bearing males achieving substantially more matings than those without one. Nuptial gifts sit at the intersection of sexual selection, nutrition, and life-history evolution, since the exchange has to pay off for the giver in mating success as much as it benefits the recipient's nutrition. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/