Sexual deception in a cannibalistic mating system? Testing the Femme Fatale hypothesis.

Exploiting a moment of weakness: male spiders escape sexual cannibalism by copulating with moulting females

Sexual cannibalism is a particularly extreme example of conflict between the sexes, depriving the male of future reproduction. Theory predicts that sexual conflict should induce counter-adaptations in the victim. Observations of male spiders mating with moulting and hence largely immobile females suggest that this behaviour functions to circumvent female control and cannibalism. However, we lac...

Sexual Cannibalism: High Incidence in a Natural Population with Benefits to Females

BACKGROUND Sexual cannibalism may be a form of extreme sexual conflict in which females benefit more from feeding on males than mating with them, and males avoid aggressive, cannibalistic females in order to increase net fitness. A thorough understanding of the adaptive significance of sexual cannibalism is hindered by our ignorance of its prevalence in nature. Furthermore, there are serious do...

The Femme Fatale and the Exotic Queer within Shinya Tuskamoto's Tetsuo: Gender as Narrative Tool within an Allegory for Post WWII Japan's Industrialized Identity Crisis

Sexual Conflict in Human Mating

Despite interdependent reproductive fates that favor cooperation, males and females exhibit many psychological and behavioral footprints of sexually antagonistic coevolution. These include strategies of deception, sexual exploitation, and sexual infidelity as well as anti-exploitation defenses such as commitment skepticism and emotions such as sexual regret and jealousy. Sexual conflict pervade...

Approach Strategy by which Male Mediterranean Tarantulas Adjust to the Cannibalistic Behaviour of Females

In sexually cannibalistic species, selection is thought to have favoured the evolution of male approaching behaviour that reduces the probability that the female will kill the male. However, investigations of behaviours that could reduce the probability of sexual cannibalism are few. We examine the hypothesis that male wolf spiders, Lycosa tarantula (L.) (Araneae, Lycosidae), decides to approac...