| male water striders attract predators to intimidate females into copulation. | despite recent advances in our understanding of sexual conflict and antagonistic coevolution between sexes, the role of interspecific interactions, such as predation, in these evolutionary processes remains unclear. in this paper, we present a new male mating strategy whereby a male water strider gerris gracilicornis intimidates a female by directly attracting predators as long as she does not accept the male's coercive copulation attempt. we argue that this male strategy is a counteradaptation ... | 2010 | 20975717 |
| size-assortative mating and sexual size dimorphism are predictable from simple mechanics of mate-grasping behavior. | a major challenge in evolutionary biology is to understand the typically complex interactions between diverse counter-balancing factors of darwinian selection for size assortative mating and sexual size dimorphism. it appears that rarely a simple mechanism could provide a major explanation of these phenomena. mechanics of behaviors can predict animal morphology, such like adaptations to locomotion in animals from various of taxa, but its potential to predict size-assortative mating and its evolu ... | 2010 | 21092131 |
| insects perceive local sex ratio in the absence of tactile or visual sex-specific cues. | numerous studies have demonstrated adaptive behavioral responses of males and females to changes in operational sex ratio (the ratio of potentially receptive males to receptive females; osr), and theory often assumes that animals have perfect instantaneous knowledge about the osr. however, the role of sensory mechanisms in monitoring the local sex ratio by animals and whether animals can perceive local sex ratio in a manner consistent with model assumptions have not been well addressed. here, we ... | 2012 | 22904594 |