Maternal care decision rules should evolve responsiveness to factors impinging on the fitness pay-offs of care. Because the caretaking environments common in industrialized and small-scale societies vary in predictable ...

Pea aphids, A cyrthosiphon pisum, have the potential to increase reproduction as a defence against pathogens, though how frequently this occurs or how infection with live pathogens influences this response is not well ...

Biological invasions offer unique opportunities to investigate evolutionary dynamics at the peripheries of expanding pop-ulations. Here, we examine genetic patterns associated with admixture between two distinct invasive ...

Conspicuous coloration, which presumably makes prey more visible to predators, has intrigued researchers for long. Contrastingly coloured, conspicuous striped patterns are common among lizards and other animals, but their ...

Behavioural plasticity can drive the evolution of new traits in animals. In oviparous species, plasticity in oviposition behaviour could promote the evolution of new egg traits by exposing them to different selective ...

In many species, empirical data suggest that temperatures less than 1 month before breeding strongly influence laying date, consistent with predictions that short lag times between cue and response are more reliable, ...

Archaic toothed mysticetes represent the evolutionary transition from raptorial to bulk filter feeding in baleen whales. Aetiocetids, in particular, preserve an intermediate morphological stage in which teeth functioned ...

Fungus-gardening (attine) ants grow fungus for food in protected gardens, which contain beneficial, auxiliary microbes, but also microbes harmful to gardens. Among these potentially pathogenic microorganisms, the most ...

Humans divide themselves up into separate cultures, which is a unique and ubiquitous characteristic of our species. Kinship norms are one of the defining features of such societies. Here we show how norms of marital residence ...

Social insects such as ants have evolved collective rather than individual immune defence strategies against diseases and parasites at the level of their societies (colonies), known as social immunity. Ants frequently host ...