Enough for all: no mating effort adjustment to varying mate availability in a gift-giving spider

Thanatosis as an adaptive male mating strategy in the nuptial gift–giving spider Pisaura mirabilis

Males and females often experience different optima in mating rate, which may cause evolution of female resistance to matings and male counter adaptations to increase mating rate. Males of the spider Pisaura mirabilis display a spectacular mating behavior involving a nuptial gift and thanatosis (death feigning). Thanatosis in a sexual context is exceptional and was suggested to function as an a...

Gift Giving with Emotions

This paper presents a two-player, psychological game-theoretic model of gift giving where emotions matter. Beliefs enter directly into players’ payoff functions. Surprise, disappointment, embarrassment and pride arise from comparing players’ beliefs about the gift they will give or receive to the actual choice of gift. Depending on beliefs and the cost of the gift, a gift-giving, a non-gift-giv...

Mating promotes lactic-acid gut bacteria in a gift-giving insect

Mate availability contributes to maintain the mixed-mating system in a scolytid beetle.

We investigated the mating system and population genetic structure of the beetle, Coccotrypes dactyliperda, with life history characteristics that suggest the presence of a stable mixed-mating system. We examined the genetic structure of seven populations in Israel and found significant departures from the Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium and an excess of homozygosity. Inbreeding coefficients were hi...

Running head : Gift Giving in Courtship Gift Giving as Costly Signaling in Courtship Contexts

Social scientists from a variety of fields have grappled with questions about why gift giving exists and where its utility comes from because it is economically inefficient. Economic models of sexual relationships (e.g., Baumeister & Vohs, 2004) propose that gifts given by men are motivated by attempts to barter for access to sex. We offer an alternative model, based on costly signaling theory ...