Latest Sexual selection Stories
Scientists have observed a strategy for females to avoid unwanted male attention: choosing more attractive friends. Published today (7 December) in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B, the study is the first to show females spending time with those more sexually attractive than themselves to reduce harassment from males. Carried out by the Universities of Exeter and Copenhagen, the study focuses on the Trinidadian guppy, a species of small freshwater fish. It shows that the...
News tips from the December issue of the American Naturalist Article Highlights from the December issue of The American Naturalist: Columbia River Salmon are Adapting to Climate Change Predators Keep Local Frogs In Uniform Can sexual selection's bizarre creations sometimes set evolution on a path to novel survival strategies? For the complete table of contents for the December issue, go to www.journals.uchicago.edu/an. Columbia River Salmon are Adapting to...
Grim economic times could cause men to seek more sexual partners, giving them more chances to reproduce, according to research by Omri Gillath, a social psychology professor at the University of Kansas. Men are likely to pursue short-term mating strategies when faced with a threatening environment, according to sexual selection theory based on evolutionary psychology. When made to think about their own death, which mimics conditions of "low survivability," Gillath and his colleagues...
In the animal world, males typically search for their female partners. The mystery is that in some species, you get a reversal -- the females search for males. A new study of katydids in the latest issue of the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B -- co-authored by University of Toronto Mississauga professor Darryl Gwynne -- supports a theory that females will search if males offer a lot more than just sperm. "In this beast [in this study], it's a big cheesy, gooey substance that...
While the early bird might catch the worm, it's the quick bird that lands the ladies, according to new research into the running performance of an Arctic cousin of the grouse.Scientists studying rock ptarmigan on the Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard discovered a large difference in the running capabilities between the sexes, with the larger males able to run more efficiently and up to 50% faster than females.The University of Manchester team suggested that faster, efficient male birds are...
(Ivanhoe Newswire) "“ The U.S. FDA notes "some concern" with the chemical BPA and some countries have considered BPA product bans. Still, scientists disagree about the effects of BPA on animals and humans. This study shows BPA to cause male deer mice to become demasculinized and behave more like females in their spatial navigational abilities, leading scientists to believe that exposure to BPA during human development could be damaging to behavioral and cognitive traits that are unique to...
How females select their sexual partners is a matter of more than passing concern to a large number of males. Focus has gradually switched from the idea that certain males are the most attractive or the best and researchers are increasingly considering the idea that particular individuals might be intrinsically compatible. Dating agencies routinely include questions about potential partners' hobbies and interests. Such issues are clearly important but the latest results from the...
Aggressive male mating behavior might well be a successful reproductive strategy for the individual but it can drive the species to extinction, an international research team headed by evolutionary biologist Daniel Rankin from the University of Zurich has demonstrated in a mathematical model. Evolutionary biologists have long debated whether the behavior of the individual is able to influence processes on a population or species level. The possibility of selection at species level is still...
Male peacock tail plumage and courtship antics likely influence their success at attracting and mating with females, according to recent Queen's University research.Roz Dakin and Robert Montgomerie have found that natural variation in the number of eyespots on a peacock's tail does not impact a male's mating success. However, peacocks whose tails are clipped to considerably reduce the number of eyespots are less successful at mating.Female rejection of males with substantially fewer eyespots...
Female deer do not always choose the bigger and dominant males to mate with, scientists from Queen Mary, University of London and Hartpury College have found.The research, which was undertaken in Dublin's Phoenix Park on a herd of fallow deer, focussed on females who chose not to mate with the 'top' males.The study, published today (6 April) in PLoS ONE found that yearling females tended to mate with a higher proportion of younger, lower ranking males while older females actively avoided...
