The courtship behavior of the semi-aquatic Pisaurid fishing spider Dolomedes fimbriatus was examined in the laboratory . Male courtship was triggered by the presence of female drag-lines, presumably b y a female sex pheromone since males did not respond with courtship to male drag-lines . Male courtship behavior included vibratory signaling (water surface waves), leg-waving, and following femal...

Resource availability influences sexual selection within populations and determines whether behaviours such as territoriality or resource sharing are adaptive. In Thoropa taophora, a frog endemic to the Atlantic Coastal Rainforest of Brazil, males compete for and defend limited breeding sites while females often share breeding sites with other females; however, sharing breeding sites may involv...

A new study of genetic variation in the human prion protein gene suggests that balancing selection has operated on an amino acid sequence polymorphism in the gene during the last five hundred thousand years. Is this a legacy of widespread cannibalism by our ancestors?