Sexual cannibalism is a particularly extreme example of conflict between the sexes, depriving the male of future reproduction. Theory predicts that sexual conflict should induce counter-adaptations in the victim. Observations of male spiders mating with moulting and hence largely immobile females suggest that this behaviour functions to circumvent female control and cannibalism. However, we lac...

In sexually cannibalistic species, selection is thought to have favoured the evolution of male approaching behaviour that reduces the probability that the female will kill the male. However, investigations of behaviours that could reduce the probability of sexual cannibalism are few. We examine the hypothesis that male wolf spiders, Lycosa tarantula (L.) (Araneae, Lycosidae), decides to approac...

Colony biofilms of Bacillus subtilis are a widely used model for studying cellular differentiation. Here, we applied matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization (MALDI) mass spectrometry imaging (MSI) to examine cellular and molecular heterogeneity in B. subtilis colony biofilms. From B. subtilis cells cultivated on a biofilm-promoting medium, we detected two cannibalistic factors not found in ...

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...

Males of some cannibalistic species of spiders and insects appear to sacrifice themselves by allowing the female to eat them, and the adaptive significance of such drastic terminal reproductive investment has recently been demonstrated for a spider. Typically, the female has to kill the male, but it has been suggested that males of some species in the cannibalistic orb-weaving spider genus Argi...

Cannibalism in the Paleolithic and prehistoric periods in Europe has been a controversial subject in discussions. Widely accepted or fully denied, it has attracted the attention of anthropologists and archaeologists for more than one hundred years. In this paper it will be shown that the human remains from the Krapina Neanderthal site have still a key position in current discussions on cannibal...

Aneuploidy is a hallmark of human cancers originating from abnormal mitoses. Many aneuploid cancer cells also have greater-than-diploid DNA content, suggesting that polyploidy is a common precursor to aneuploidy during tumor progression. Polyploid cells can originate from cell fusion, endoreplication, and cytokinesis failure. Recently we found that cell cannibalism by entosis, a form of cell en...