Sexual conflict over fertilization may in animals with internal fertilization initiate an evolutionary arms race that causes the female reproductive tract to become hostile to sperm performance if females with more selective reproductive tracts have their eggs fertilized by sperm of superior quality. This hypothesis suggests that sperm should perform better when tested in a physiologically neut...

Fig 1 is incorrect. Please see the corrected Fig 1 here. Copyright: © 2015 Hobson et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

JOSÉ J. CUERVO, 1 * ANDERS P. MØLLER 2 & FLORENTINO DE LOPE 3 1 Estación Experimental de Zonas Áridas, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Calle General Segura 1, E-04001 Almería, Spain 2 Laboratoire de Parasitologie Evolutive, CNRS UMR 7103, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, 7 quai St. Bernard, Case 237, F-75252 Paris Cedex 05, France 3 Departamento de Ciencias Morfológicas y Biol...

The outermost tail feathers in male barn swallows {Hirundo rustica) are the target of a strong directional female mate preference. The" tait ornament is also expressed in females, since females have considerably longer tails than juveniles, either due to (1) a strong genetic correlation between the characters in the two sexes, or (2) direct sexual selection on females. To discriminate between t...

José Javier Cuervo, Anders Pape Møller, and Florentino de Lope Estación Experimental de Zonas Áridas, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientı́ficas, Calle General Segura 1, E-04001 Almerı́a, Spain, Laboratoire d’Ecologie Evolutive Parasitaire, CNRS FRE 2365, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Bât. A, 7ème étage, 7 quai St. Bernard, Case 237, F-75252 Paris Cedex 05, France, and Departamento de B...

Circannual rhythms often rely on endogenous seasonal photoperiodic timers involving 'clock' genes, and Clock gene polymorphism has been associated to variation in phenology in some bird species. In the long-distance migratory barn swallow Hirundo rustica, individuals bearing the rare Clock allele with the largest number of C-terminal polyglutamine repeats found in this species (Q8) show a delay...

Physiological trade-offs mediated by limiting energy, resources or time constrain the simultaneous expression of major functions and can lead to the evolution of temporal separation between demanding activities. In birds, plumage renewal is a demanding activity, which accomplishes fundamental functions, such as allowing thermal insulation, aerodynamics and socio-sexual signaling. Feather renewa...

ABSTP•CT.--The frequency of nest reuse and the costs and benefits of this behavior were investigated in a population of Barn Swallows (Hirundo rustica) at Delta Marsh, Manitoba, during 1984-1986. Slightly less than half the clutches were laid in old nests, and this proportion did not change seasonally except in one late year when old nests were preferred by late-nesting pairs. The delay between...