The male mouse medial amygdala is an important site for integration of main and accessory olfactory information. Exposure to biologically relevant chemical signals from the same species (conspecific) results in a general pattern of immediate early gene (IEG) expression in medial amygdala different from that elicited by chemical signals from other species (heterospecific), of no demonstrable bio...

In many species males aggregate and produce long-range advertisement signals to attract conspecific females. The majority of the receivers of these signals are probably other males most of the time, and male responses to competitors' signals can structure the spatial and temporal organization of the breeding aggregation and affect male mating tactics. I quantified male responses to a conspecifi...

reprintInfo.asp. DOI: 10.1525/cond.2010.090239 Abstract. Numerous studies have confirmed that when selecting habitat birds can use social information acquired from observing other individuals, and many aspects of this social information can be capitalized upon to manage bird populations. The conservation implications of attraction to conspecifics are especially promising for management, and as ...

Male acoustic signals and the information they convey are often critical determinants of female mate choice. Bladder grasshoppers are one of numerous orthopteran taxa utilizing sound as the basis of courtship and ultimately mating. However, despite the extreme specializations for long-distance acoustic communication in this family, female mating preferences for male calls have not been previous...

A modified version of the intruder-resident paradigm was used to investigate if social recognition memory lasts at least 24 h. One hundred and forty-six adult male Wistar rats were used. Independent groups of rats were exposed to an intruder for 0.083, 0.5, 2, 24, or 168 h and tested 24 h after the first encounter with the familiar or a different conspecific. Factor analysis was employed to ide...

1. Research on habitat selection has focused on the role of vegetative and geologic characteristics or antagonistic behavioural interactions. 2. Conspecifics can confer information about habitat quality and provide positive density-dependent effects, suggesting habitat selection in response to the presence of conspecifics can be an adaptive strategy. 3. We conducted a manipulative field experim...

We evaluated how various phylogenetic models for estimating ancestral characters can influence studies of behavioural evolution. Previously we used a single model of evolution to estimate the values of call characters at ancestral nodes for the Physalaemus pustulosus species group and some close relatives (Ryan & Rand 1995, Science, 269, 390-392). We then synthesized these ancestral calls and m...

In the Allonemobius socius complex of crickets, reproductive isolation is primarily accomplished via postmating prezygotic barriers. We tested seven protein-coding genes expressed in the male ejaculate for patterns of evolution consistent with a putative role as postmating prezygotic isolation genes. Our recently diverged species generally lacked sequence variation. As a result, ω-based tests w...

Home range (HR) size variation is often linked to resource abundance, with sex differences expected to relate to sex-specific fitness consequences. However, studies generally fail to disentangle the effects of the two main drivers of HR size variation, food and conspecific density, and rarely consider how their relative influence change over spatiotemporal scales. We used location data from 77 ...

Local electric fields generated by the electric organ discharge of Gymnotus carapo were explored at selected points on the skin of an emitter fish ('local self-generated fields') and on the skin of a conspecific ('local conspecific-generated fields') using a specially designed probe. Local self-generated fields showed a constant pattern along the body of the fish. At the head, these fields were...