Giving marsupials scents from suitors helps breeding programs

Smell is a vital part of sexual attraction for all kinds of animals (including humans). We may be able to use smell to improve breeding programs by giving the female animal a sample sniff of potential mates and letting her ...

Mate-guarding behaviour favours a familiar face

Okayama University researchers confirm the role of mate-guarding in males for blocking the female's visual familiarity with rival males to improve mating success in a medaka fish model.

Female mice do not avoid mating with unhealthy males

Female mice are attracted more strongly to the odour of healthy males than unhealthy males. This had already been shown in an earlier study by researchers from the Konrad Lorenz Institute of Ethology at the Vetmeduni Vienna. ...

Tiny male spiders can get a leg over—as long as they're picky

Males will mate with anything. Well, that is the general view, one that exists because of a simple biological underpinning: females are reproductively limited by costly gestation, while males are only limited by their number ...

Testis size matters for genome evolution

In many primates, females mate with multiple partners, causing an often-intense competition amongst males to pass along their DNA to be king of the genome as well as the jungle.

Reversal of the black widow myth

The Black Widow spider gets its name from the popular belief that female spiders eat their male suitors after mating. However, a new study has shown that the tendency to consume a potential mate is also true of some types ...

Female mate choice enhances offspring fitness in an annual herb

In many organisms females directly or indirectly select mates (or sperm) and potentially influence the fitness of their offspring. Mate choice and sexual selection in plants is more complex in some ways than in animals because ...

The mechanics of speciation

Mate choice, competition, and the variety of resources available are the key factors influencing how a species evolves into separate species, according to a new mathematical model that integrates all three factors to reveal ...

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