Article
Psychology, Multidisciplinary
Katarzyna Pisanski, Maydel Fernandez-Alonso, Nadir Diaz-Simon, Anna Oleszkiewicz, Adrian Sardinas, Robert Pellegrino, Nancy Estevez, Emanuel C. Mora, Curtis R. Luckett, David R. Feinberg
Summary: Height preferences in mate selection differ between genders, with men generally preferring taller female partners. Additionally, men exhibit stronger assortative preferences for height in short-term relationships compared to long-term relationships.
FRONTIERS IN PSYCHOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Jonathan M. Henshaw, Lutz Fromhage, Adam G. Jones
Summary: The aesthetic preferences of potential mates play a significant role in the evolution of elaborate ornaments. Females tend to prefer ornaments that signal a male's quality and have preexisting perceptual biases. The costs of preference expression and the potential genetic benefits associated with offspring attractiveness are important factors in shaping female preferences.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
(2022)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Koutaro Ould Maeno, Cyril Piou, Sidi Ould Ely, Sid'Ahmed Ould Mohamed, Mohamed El Hacen Jaavar, Said Ghaout, Mohamed Abdallahi Ould Babah Ebbe
Summary: Male mating harassment can be reduced in dense populations of desert locusts through behavioral adaptations, where non-gravid females and males live separately while males wait for gravid females at lekking sites to mate. In low-density populations, solitarious locusts display balanced sex ratios and females mate regardless of ovarian state. This suggests that group separation based on sex biases behavior to minimize male mating harassment and competition.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
(2021)
Article
Biology
Paulo B. Chaves, Karen B. Strier, Anthony Di Fiore
Summary: Evidence suggests that females, both human and nonhuman primates, avoid breeding with close kin and may choose mates based on MHC diversity. In egalitarian societies like the northern muriquis, female mate choice is less constrained and sires with higher MHC diversity are preferred. However, there is no evidence of mating preference for males who are more distantly related or have more MHC alleles distinct from their own, suggesting that female mate choice may be limited by other factors impacting male fertilization success.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE ROYAL SOCIETY B-BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES
(2023)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Michael J. Ryan
Summary: Darwin's theory of sexual selection, proposed one hundred fifty years ago, focuses on female preferences for elaborately ornamented males due to their taste for beauty. Research has since explored fitness advantages, sensory ecology, signal design, neural circuits, and neurochemistry, providing insight into the mechanisms behind mate choice. Recent studies inspired by human research in psychophysics, behavioral economics, and neuroaesthetics have further advanced our understanding of mate choices.
PROCEEDINGS OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
(2021)
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Pietro Pollo, Nathan W. Burke, Gregory Holwell
Summary: This study explored the effects of male activity levels and female aggressiveness on mating behavior and sexual cannibalism in the springbok mantis, finding that more active males were faster and more likely to interact with females while younger females were more likely to cannibalize males. The study suggests that both male and female personality traits influence the likelihood of sexual encounters, but have little effect on the likelihood of cannibalism, highlighting the potential for personality traits of both sexes to influence mating dynamics in sexually cannibalistic species.
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Sarah L. Y. Lau, Gray A. Williams, Antonio Carvajal-Rodriguez, Emilio Rolan-Alvarez
Summary: Size-assortative mating and sexual selection on size are common across species, with mate choice based on size being a widespread process. In studying the size-based mate choice in intertidal snails, it was found that males prefer to mate with slightly larger females, and multiple-choice experiments are valuable in understanding how males choose mates in the wild.
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Samuel P. Caro, Leo Pierre, Matthieu Berges, Raldi Bakker, Claire Doutrelant, Francesco Bonadonna
Summary: The research found that both males and females are quite choosy when selecting sexual partners, with females being slightly pickier than males. They tend to prefer individuals with a pale chest plumage over colorful ones, with this preference being more pronounced in females. Additionally, individuals with paler chest plumage are more likely to be selected by birds that are also pale in color.
BEHAVIORAL ECOLOGY
(2021)
Article
Ecology
Ryan Calsbeek, Francisco Javier Zamora-Camacho, Laurel B. Symes
Summary: A novel application of acoustic camera technology was used to investigate the influence of individual wood frogs' calls on chorus properties and mating opportunities. The results showed that males and females preferred choruses with low variance in dominant frequency, and females preferred choruses with low mean peak frequency. Field studies revealed that more egg masses were laid in ponds where male frogs chorused with low variance in dominant frequency.
Article
Biology
Gina M. Calabrese, Karin S. Pfennig
Summary: Mating with another species can result in no or low-fitness offspring. This study found that females of spadefoot toads alter their preferences for male sexual signals depending on the presence of heterospecifics, choosing traits that are dissimilar to heterospecifics in the presence of heterospecific signals, but choosing exaggerated traits indicative of high-quality conspecific mates in the absence of heterospecifics.
Article
Ecology
E. Keith Bowers
Summary: Woodman et al. investigate age-assortative mating in bird populations with different life-history strategies. They find that in long-lived mute swans, positive age-assortative mating occurs through active mate selection, while in shorter-lived great tits, it is primarily a passive byproduct of demographic processes.
JOURNAL OF ANIMAL ECOLOGY
(2023)
Article
Psychology, Clinical
Susan M. Hughes, Toe Aung, Marissa A. Harriso, Jack N. LaFayette, Gordon G. Gallup
Summary: This study found that there are gender differences in sexual preferences and appearance modifications, with men preferring variety and novelty, while women focusing more on stability and consistency. Men are more likely to pursue diverse and new experiences in potential sexual partners, while women tend to prioritize stability and consistency in relationships.
ARCHIVES OF SEXUAL BEHAVIOR
(2021)
Article
Psychology, Biological
Michael J. Pauers, Jacob A. Grudnowski
Summary: This study examines behavioral reproductive isolation in a pair of rock-dwelling cichlids from Lake Malawi and confirms that females prefer conspecific males, providing further evidence for the role of sexual selection in speciation of cichlid fishes from Lake Malawi.
Article
Biology
David Bierbach, Ronja Wenchel, Stefan Gehrig, Serafina Wersing, Olivia L. O'Connor, Jens Krause
Summary: Through two experiments, we found that male guppies prefer females with higher swimming activity levels as mating partners, which may be related to individual quality, health or reproductive state.
Article
Ecology
Olivia E. Anastasio, Chelsea S. Sinclair, Alison Pischedda
Summary: Cryptic male mate choice refers to the differential allocation of resources by males to females during or after copulation. In the fruit fly Drosophila melanogaster, males mate longer and allocate more resources to larger females compared to smaller females. However, it is unclear if this increased investment in larger females has any impact on the males' subsequent matings.
Review
Biology
Nicholas P. Moran, Alfredo Sanchez-Tojar, Holger Schielzeth, Klaus Reinhold
Summary: This study examined the impact of animals' physical condition on their risk-taking behavior. The findings suggest that individuals in poor condition tend to be more risk-prone, while those in better condition are more risk-averse. The research highlights the importance of state dependency and plasticity in intraspecific behavioral variation.
BIOLOGICAL REVIEWS
(2021)
Article
Ecology
Gabe Winter, Mahendra Varma, Holger Schielzeth
Summary: Through breeding experiments, it was found that the green-brown polymorphism in the steppe grasshopper Chorthippus dorsatus is primarily genetically determined by three autosomal loci with simple dominance effects. This contrasts with other grasshopper subfamilies where environmental factors play a more significant role in determining color polymorphisms.
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Alexandra M. Mutwill, Holger Schielzeth, Tobias D. Zimmermann, S. Helene Richter, Sylvia Kaiser, Norbert Sachser
Summary: The acquisition of dominance rank in males is a crucial phase that can influence reproductive success and fitness, with hormones such as testosterone and glucocorticoids playing a role. Individual variation in hormone concentrations and their repeatability, particularly in dynamic social settings, is of current interest. Despite a significant positive relationship between baseline testosterone and rank, this link weakened with age, while baseline cortisol and cortisol responsiveness were not significantly related to dominance. Importantly, all three endocrine parameters showed significant repeatability independent of dominance rank, with baseline testosterone and cortisol responsiveness demonstrating higher repeatability than baseline cortisol. This suggests that testosterone levels and cortisol responsiveness represent stable individual attributes even in complex social conditions.
HORMONES AND BEHAVIOR
(2021)
Article
Multidisciplinary Sciences
Martin A. Stoffel, Shinichi Nakagawa, Holger Schielzeth
Summary: The coefficient of determination R-2 quantifies the variance explained by regression coefficients in a linear model. partR2 is an R package based on linear mixed-effects models that quantifies part R-2 for fixed effect predictors, providing reliable estimates and confidence intervals for each predictor.
Article
Plant Sciences
Holger Schielzeth, Jochen B. W. Wolf
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF BOTANY
(2021)
Article
Behavioral Sciences
E. Takola, E. Tobias Krause, C. Muller, H. Schielzeth
Summary: Studies have shown that novel object trials can reliably estimate individual differences in behavior, but results are highly heterogeneous even within the same study species, suggesting susceptibility to unknown details in test conditions.
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Pauline Heinze, Petra Dieker, Hannah M. Rowland, Holger Schielzeth
Summary: Grasshoppers of different color variants choose different substrates to rest on, and some potential predators are able to perceive these differences. Individual substrate choice contributes to the coexistence of different color variants within the same species.
BEHAVIORAL ECOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Plant Sciences
Anne Ebeling, Alex T. Strauss, Peter B. Adler, Carlos A. Arnillas, Isabel C. Barrio, Lori A. Biederman, Elizabeth T. Borer, Miguel N. Bugalho, Maria C. Caldeira, Marc W. Cadotte, Pedro Daleo, Nico Eisenhauer, Anu Eskelinen, Philip A. Fay, Jennifer Firn, Pamela Graff, Nicole Hagenah, Sylvia Haider, Kimberly J. Komatsu, Rebecca L. McCulley, Charles E. Mitchell, Joslin L. Moore, Jesus Pascual, Pablo L. Peri, Sally A. Power, Suzanne M. Prober, Anita C. Risch, Christiane Roscher, Mahesh Sankaran, Eric W. Seabloom, Holger Schielzeth, Martin Schuetz, Karina L. Speziale, Michelle Tedder, Risto Virtanen, Dana M. Blumenthal
Summary: The study found that nitrogen addition significantly increased invertebrate damage and pathogen damage, with the effects of nitrogen being stronger on invertebrate damage. Precipitation levels affected damage levels in grasslands, with lower precipitation areas experiencing less damage. Human-induced inputs of nitrogen and phosphorus are likely to increase plant damage in the future, impacting multiple ecological communities and trophic levels.
JOURNAL OF ECOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Marko Bracic, Lena Bohn, Viktoria Siewert, Vanessa T. von Kortzfleisch, Holger Schielzeth, Sylvia Kaiser, Norbert Sachser, S. Helene Richter
Summary: Individuals differ in the way they judge ambiguous information, with some individuals being more optimistic and others more pessimistic. Optimistic and pessimistic judgment biases have been used as indicators of animals' emotional states in animal welfare science. This study explored the role of genetic and environmental factors in modulating judgment biases in mice and found that they did not have a significant influence on these biases. However, anxiety-like behavior was influenced by genotypes and environments. Additionally, the study showed that individual differences in judgment biases were stable over time. Further research is needed to investigate the impact of other factors on judgment biases and to understand their ecological and evolutionary relevance.
BEHAVIORAL ECOLOGY
(2022)
Article
Biology
Rose Trappes, Behzad Nematipour, Marie Kaiser, Ulrich Krohs, Koen J. van Benthem, Ulrich R. Ernst, Jurgen Gadau, Peter Korsten, Joachim Kurtz, Holger Schielzeth, Tim Schmoll, Elina Takola
Summary: This study presents a conceptual framework that distinguishes three mechanisms of organism-environment interaction and their impacts on individual differences and adaptation. It highlights niche construction and other processes as evolved mechanisms.
Article
Ecology
Holger Schielzeth, Shinichi Nakagawa
Summary: Individuals differ in average phenotypes and in sensitivity to environmental variation. We propose a method to model this context sensitivity as random slope variation and incorporate it into the background of total phenotypic variance. We provide formulas for calculating key descriptors of conditional repeatabilities and clarify the difference between random intercept variation and average between-individual variation.
METHODS IN ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
(2022)
Article
History & Philosophy Of Science
Elina Takola, Holger Schielzeth
Summary: We propose a concept of individualized niche that focuses on the match between individual phenotype and its environment, with evolutionary fitness as the parameter to evaluate this match. Scaling down the ecological niche from population to individual level presents challenges in terms of uniqueness, dynamics, dimensionality, and defining boundaries. This concept is important for understanding the causes and consequences of individual differences in animal behavior.
BIOLOGY & PHILOSOPHY
(2022)
Article
Biochemistry & Molecular Biology
Niloofar Alaei Kakhki, Manuel Schweizer, Dave Lutgen, Rauri C. K. Bowie, Hadoram Shirihai, Alexander Suh, Holger Schielzeth, Reto Burri
Summary: Insights into the processes underpinning convergent evolution advance our understanding of the contributions of ancestral, introgressed, and novel genetic variation to phenotypic evolution. Phylogenomic analyses characterizing genome-wide gene tree heterogeneity can provide first clues about the extent of ILS and of introgression and thereby into the potential of these processes or (in their absence) the need to invoke novel mutations to underpin convergent evolution. Here, we were interested in understanding the processes involved in convergent evolution in open-habitat chats (wheatears of the genus Oenanthe and their relatives) and investigated these processes using whole-genome resequencing data from 50 taxa of 44 species. Our results suggest that convergent evolution in open-habitat chats involved diverse processes, including ILS, introgression, and novel mutations, and highlight the complexity of phenotypic diversification.
MOLECULAR BIOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
(2023)
Article
Behavioral Sciences
Alexandra M. Mutwill, Holger Schielzeth, S. Helene Richter, Sylvia Kaiser, Norbert Sachser
Summary: Individual differences in behavioral and physiological traits among members of the same species are important in animal research. This study found that the repeatability and individual variance components of hormonal phenotypes varied in different social environments in guinea pig males. The complex colony housing led to larger between-individual variation in baseline testosterone, which was not explained by dominance rank.
HORMONES AND BEHAVIOR
(2023)
Article
Ecology
Mahendra Varma, Gabe Winter, Hannah M. Rowland, Holger Schielzeth
Summary: This study focuses on the color development of two green-brown polymorphic insect species and finds that color morph differences begin to develop in the second nymphal stage and are clearly defined by the third nymphal stage. The shed skins of late nymphal stages can be identified based on their yellowish coloration. The study also reveals variation in how different potential predators perceive these color morphs.
ECOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
(2023)