Zoophytophagous insects can substitute animals for plant resources when prey is scarce. Many arthropods feed on conspecifics to survive in these conditions. An individual's tendency for cannibalism may depend on its genotype along with its diet specialization, in interaction with the availability of alternative food resources. We compared two isogroup lines of the zoophytophagous mullein bug, e...

Conflict arises among social organisms when individuals differ in their inclusive-fitness interests. Ant societies are excellent models for understanding how genetic relatedness mediates conflict intensity. However, although conflicts within colonies typically arise over offspring production, the role of larvae as actors in social conflict has received little attention. We develop and empirical...

Resource availability often determines the intensity of cannibalism, which has a considerable effect on population size distribution and individual life history. Larvae of the caddisfly Psilotreta kisoensis build portable cases from sedimentary sands and often display cannibalism. For this species, the availability of preferable case material is a critical factor that affects larval fitness, an...

In natural populations, courting males of Araneus diadematus are often consumed by females before they have successfully copulated. Despite the possible nutritional benefits of sexual cannibalism for females, the male can derive no benefit by being consumed before copulation. In this study, females that consumed a single male significantly increased their body mass, regardless of the quality of...

Models of the evolution of sexual cannibalism argue that males may offset the cost of cannibalism if components of the male body are directly allocated to the eggs that they fertilize. We tested this idea in the praying mantid Tenodera sinensis Males and females were fed differently radiolabelled crickets and allowed to mate. Half of the pairs progressed to sexual cannibalism and we prevented c...

In fish, brood cycling parental males sometimes eat some or all of their eggs, a behavior termed filial cannibalism. We tested predictions of filial cannibalism models related to the cost of parental care in the male sand goby, Pomatoschistus minutus, by increasing the parental effort (fanning expenditure) through reduced levels of dissolved oxygen to 39% in an experimental group, whereas a con...

Cannibalism as a topic of interest, both general and anthropological, has seen a revival of concern in the last seven years or so. Primarily responsible for this revival is the controversial stance taken by William Arens in his book, The ManEating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy (1979). Following the publication of this work has been a deluge of articles and books, popular and specialized,...

In natural populations, courting males of Araneus diadematus are often consumed by females before they have successfully copulated. Despite the possible nutritional benefits of sexual cannibalism for females, the male can derive no benefit by being consumed before copulation. In this study, females that consumed a single male significantly increased their body mass, regardless of the quality of...

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2018.03.003 0003-3472/© 2018 The Authors. Published by Elsevie license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) Although the consumption of one's own offspring is often viewed as maladaptive, under some circumstances this behaviour can be a beneficial way to terminate parental care. When the costs of providing care are extremely high or the benefits of per...

PRO: Because myoglobin comes only from heart and skeletal muscle, myoglobin was not detected in 20 'control' faeces from other Puebloan archaeological sites, nor in modern faeces from 29 healthy individuals and 10 patients with blood in their faeces. The myo-globin-specific antibody used does not detect the related blood protein haemoglobin 1. CON: Okay, you've proved one case of cannibalism, b...