Parasites are thought to play an important role in sexual selection and the evolution of mating strategies, which in turn are likely to be critical to the transmission and therefore the evolution of parasites. Despite this clear interdependence we have little understanding of parasite-mediated sexual selection in the context of reciprocal parasite evolution. Here we develop a general coevolutio...

The last decade has witnessed considerable theoretical and empirical investigation of how male sexual ornaments evolve. This strong male-biased perspective has resulted in the relative neglect of variation in female mate preferences and its consequences for ornament evolution. As sexual selection is a co-evolutionary process between males and females, ignoring variation in females overlooks a k...

Female mate preferences for ecologically relevant traits may enhance natural selection, leading to rapid divergence. They may also forge a link between mate choice within species and sexual isolation between species. Here, we examine female mate preference for two ecologically important traits: body size and body shape. We measured female preferences within and between species of benthic, limne...

Experience of sexual signals can alter mate preferences and influence the course of sexual selection. Here, we examine the patterns of experience-mediated plasticity in mate preferences that can arise in response to variation in the composition of mates in the environment. We use these patterns to test hypotheses about potential sources of selection favouring experience-mediated plasticity. We ...

undifferentiated periphery and immaturity of hindlimb motoneurons. The early appearance of the pattern generator for coordination between the hindlimbs, activation of this pattern generator only during operation of the locomotor program for tail oscillations, and the rigid phase and frequency locking between bursts of primary and hindlimb motoneurons all suggest that the two pattern generators ...

Regularised Discriminant Analysis has proven to be a most eeective classiier for problems where traditional classiiers fail because of a lack of suucient training samples, as is often the case in high dimensional settings. However, it has been shown that the model selection procedure of Regularised Discriminant Analysis, determining the degree of regu-larisation, has some deeciencies associated...

Genetic, life history, and environmental factors dictate patterns of variation in sexual traits within and across populations, and thus the action and outcome of sexual selection. This study explores patterns of inheritance, diet, age, and mate-choice copying on the expression of male sexual signals and associated female mate choice in a phenotypically diverse group of Schizocosa wolf spiders. ...

When searching for a mate, one must gather information to determine the mate value of potential partners. By focusing on individuals who have been previously chosen by others, one's selection of mates can be influenced by another's successful search—a phenomenon known as mate copying. We show mate copying in humans with a novel methodology that closely mimics behavioral studies with nonhuman an...

The negative frequency-dependent effect of reproductive success in animals on population growth refers to a category of phenomena termed the Allee effect. The mechanistic basis for this effect and hence an understanding of its consequences has been obscure. We suggest that sexual selection, in particular female mate preferences, is a previously neglected component giving rise to the Allee effec...

The paper discusses the application of two decision methods, Cost-Benefit Analysis (CBA) and Multi-Attribute Tradespace Exploration (MATE), to the selection of “best” design alternatives across two case studies in the transportation domain. The cases are an airport express for the city of Chicago, and a freight rail line linking Lisbon, Portugal to Madrid, Spain. Through the joint use of MATE a...