The effect of the social environment on post-copulatory mate guarding duration in Japanese beetles, (Popillia japonica Newman), was examined in a laboratory experiment. The mate guarding durations of beetles in different sex ratios and densities were observed for 10 hours. Guarding duration was longer when females were larger, suggesting the presence of 'cryptic' male mate choice. Densities, bu...

Given a 1.5-dimensional terrain T , also known as an x-monotone polygonal chain, the Terrain Guarding problem seeks a set of points of minimum size on T that guards all of the points on T . Here, we say that a point p guards a point q if no point of the line segment pq is strictly below T . The Terrain Guarding problem has been extensively studied for over 20 years. In 2005 it was already estab...

1. Few studies have experimentally quantified the costs and benefits of female egg-guarding behaviour in arthropods under field conditions. Moreover, there is also a lack of studies assessing separately the survival and fecundity costs associated with this behavioural trait. 2. Here we employ field experimental manipulations and capture-mark-recapture methods to identify and quantify the costs ...

Cuckoldry is an adaptive problem faced by parentally investing males of socially monogamous species (e.g., humans and many avian species). Mate guarding and frequent in-pair copulation (IPC) may have evolved as anti-cuckoldry tactics in avian species and in humans. In some avian species, the tactics are used concurrently, with the result that mate guarding behaviors and IPC frequency are correl...

Let P be a simple polygon. We define a witness set W to be a set of points such that if any (prospective) guard set G guards W , then it is guaranteed that G guards P . We show that not all polygons admit a finite witness set. If a finite minimal witness set exists, then it cannot contain any witness in the interior of P ; all witnesses must lie on the boundary of P , and there can be at most o...

Mate-guarding is an important determinant of male reproductive success in a number of species. However, it is known to potentially incur costs. The aim of the present study was to assess the effect of mate-guarding on male physiological stress and aggression in long-tailed macaques, a species in which males mate-guard females to a lesser extent than predicted by the Priority of Access model (Po...

Scott P. Carroll Department of Biology, University of Utah, Salt Lake City, UT 84112, USA I compared male allocation to prolonged mate guarding versus not guarding between two populations of the soapberry bug {fadera haematoloma) that differ in adult sex ratio: Oklahoma, USA (mean ± SD adult sex ratio, 2.70 ± 0.95 males per female), and Florida, USA (1.09 ± 0.26 males per female). To predict th...

Precopulatory mate-guarding in aquatic crustaceans is known to have immediate costs for the guarding male. The extent to which guarding behavior may reduce future reproductive opportunities, however, is less established. We examined the survival and antennae length, suggested to be important in detecting receptive females, in male freshwater isopods (Asellus aquaticus) collected paired or unpai...