Among domestic dog breeders it is common practice to transfer a domestic dog bitch out of her home environment for mating, bringing her back after the mating. If the home environment contains a male, who is not the father of the foetuses, there is a potential risk of future infanticide. We collected 621 records on mating of 249 healthy bitches of 11 breed-types. The highest proportion of succes...

Figure 1. Nuptial gifts of insects. An array of nuptial gifts provided by male insects. Top left: during mating, a female dance fly (Diptera: Empididae) feeds upon a dead insect provided by her mate (Photo: Rob Knell). Top right: a male scorpionfly (Mecoptera: Panorpodidae) secretes a white salivary mass that will be consumed by a female during mating (Photo: Arp Kruithof). Bottom left: after m...

BACKGROUND Although in the last few years there has been an increasing attention to the problem of landmines, to date, the implications of women being victims of landmine has not been duly dealt with in the world including Iran, which is estimated to be the second most landmine infested country in the world. Still, provinces by the west border of Iran, 18 years after cessation of Iraq-Iran war ...

In the present study, besides morphological evidence, two bioassays, antenna-excision and hairpencil-excision, were used to demonstrate the presence of a male sex pheromone of the diamondback moth Plutella xylostella L. Although the antenna-excision bioassay demonstrated that a male aphrodiasic pheromone exists in the diamondback moth, it was proven to be not as important as the female sex pher...

Theory has identified a variety of evolutionary processes that may lead to speciation. Our study includes selection experiments using different host plants and test key predictions concerning models of speciation based on host plant choice, such as the evolution of host use (preference and performance) and assortative mating. This study shows that after only ten generations of selection on diff...

Reproduction is an important life process in insects; however, few studies have attempted to demonstrate the association between reproductive activity and energy metabolism. To address this problem, we focused on the reproductive changes in Bactrocera dorsalis males. We analyzed B. dorsalis male gene expression profiles during mating (DM), 3 h after mating (A3HM) and 12 h after mating (A12HM). ...

Sensory systems are very susceptible to early environment experience. Mating success depends on the transmission of information from the signaller to the receiver, which means that sensory biases caused by developmental environment are likely to affect sexual selection. We investigated the impact of the developmental visual environment (light spectrum) on male copulation behaviour and female pr...

To get a better understanding of the mating behavior of the navel orangeworm, Amyelois transitella (Walker), we developed a robust laboratory colony derived from larvae collected in Bakersfield, California and fed on dried, roasted pistachio. In the lab at 25 degrees C, most of the mating activity was observed during the last hour of the scotophase and for the first 30 min of the photophase. Fe...

For the last decade, Japanese quail (Coturnix japonica) have served as subjects in an extended series of studies of social influences on reproductive behavior. The results of those studies are summarized here. Females prefer to affiliate with males that they have seen courting and mating, whereas males avoid females that they have seen courting and mating, and both males and females prefer to c...