Resource partitioning is well known along food and habitat for reducing competition among sympatric species, yet a study on temporal partitioning as a viable basis for reducing resource competition is not empirically ...

Animal societies are typically divided into those in which reproduction within a group is monopolized by a single female versus those in which it is shared among multiple females. It remains controversial, however, whether ...

Butterfly eyespots are known to function in predator deflection and predator intimidation, but it is still unclear what factors cause eyespots to serve one function over the other. Both functions have been demonstrated in ...

Tropical and subtropical species typically experience relatively high atmospheric temperatures during reproduction, and are subject to climate-related challenges that are largely unexplored, relative to more extensive work ...

How to optimally allocate time, energy and investment in an effort to maximize one’s reproductive success is a fundamental problem faced by all organisms. This effort is complicated when the production of each additional ...

Animals communicating via scent often deposit composite signals that incorporate odorants from multiple sources however, the function of mixing chemical signals remains understudied. We tested both a ‘multiple-messages’ ...

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 ...

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 ...

The ability to change coloration allows animals to modify their patterning to suit a specific function. Many freshwater fishes, for example, can appear cryptic by altering the dispersion of melanin pigment in the skin to ...

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 ...