Why Do Dolphins Carry Sponges?

Why Do Dolphins Carry Sponges?

Tool use is rare in wild animals, but of widespread interest because of its relationship to animal cognition, social learning and culture. Despite such attention, quantifying the costs and benefits of tool use has been difficult, largely because if tool use occurs, all population members typically exhibit the behavior. In Shark Bay, Australia, only a subset of the bottlenose dolphin population ...

COMMENTARY: Why do pathogens carry avirulence genes?

In the gene-for-gene hypothesis, Flor [19] proposed the existence of avirulence alleles of virulence genes, and that the virulence genes actively conditioned cultivar-specific virulence on hosts. Yet cultivar-specific virulence genes have not been found, and many of the avirulence (aŠr) genes cloned to date (over 40) do not appear to condition pathogenicity in general, virulence or anything els...

Why do Indo-Pacific bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops sp.) carry conch shells (Turbinella sp.) in Shark Bay, Western Australia?

Why do dolphins form mixed-species associations in the Azores ?

Biological samples of free-ranging dolphins are increasingly used to gain information on population structure and ecology. In small cetaceans, the gender of individuals usually cannot be determined at sea, and population sex ratio has to be inferred indirectly. We used molecular sexing to determine the gender of 340 biopsy samples of bottlenose dolphins, Tursiops truncatus, spotted dolphins, St...

Why do sperm carry RNA? Relatedness, conflict, and control.

Classically, sperm were seen as transcriptionally inactive vehicles for delivering the paternal haplotype to an egg. Yet, it has become apparent that sperm also carry thousands of different RNAs, and the functions of most of these are unknown. Here, we make four novel suggestions for sperm RNA function. First, they could act as relatedness markers facilitating sperm cooperation. Second, they co...