Males pay considerable reproductive costs in acquiring mates (precopulatory sexual selection) and in producing ejaculates that are effective at fertilising eggs in the presence of competing ejaculates (postcopulatory sexual selection). Given these costs, males must balance their reproductive investment in a given mating to optimise their future reproductive potential. Males are therefore expect...

The chemical complexity of the male ejaculate is truly extraordinary and every bit as remarkable as the most extravagant male plumage and courtship displays. This protein-rich seminal fluid delivers chemical messages that can enter the female brain and modify behaviour, stimulate muscle contractions in, and change the appearance of the female reproductive tract, and cause females to release rep...

Reproductive division of labour is based on biased expression complementary parental behaviours, brood production (egg-laying) by queens and care (in particular, brood-provisioning) workers. In many social insect species, provision when establishing colonies at the beginning a breeding season reproductive begins with emergence foraging (for) mRNA associated intensity behaviour therefore brood-p...