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Non‐human animals can exhibit idiosyncratic behaviour across individuals in much in the same way as humans. Animals with specific personalities may have advantages in some environments, and this idiosyncrasy may thus be of considerable ecological and evolutionary importance. In group‐living organisms, personality can occur at the level of the group as well as that of the individual. However, at present,...
Experiments are the foundation of empirical science, and experimental paradigms that are broadly applicable across settings and species are particularly useful for comparative research. Originally developed to address questions related to perception and cognition of pre‐verbal human infants, the looking time experimental paradigm has been increasingly used to study animal behavior and cognition, particularly...
Vigilance is a key to the early detection of predators, but may be costly if it impairs foraging efficiency. Hence, we would expect vigilance to be suppressed and/or counter‐selected in predator‐free environments, although this might depend on the environmental drivers influencing perceived predation risk. We studied vigilance in two populations of Sitka black‐tailed deer (Odocoileus hemionus sitkensis...
We know much less about the evolutionary forces and constraints that maintain similar mating displays in females and males than we do about sexually dimorphic mating displays. Both female and male green lacewings have sexually monomorphic vibrational mating signals and are equally choosy against heterospecific mating signals. This similarity in between‐species sex roles may explain a large part of...
In group‐living animals, individuals may benefit from the presence of an innovative group‐mate because new resources made available by innovators can be exploited, for example by scrounging or social learning. As a consequence, it may pay off to take the group‐mates' problem‐solving abilities into account in social interactions such as aggression or spatial association, for example because dominance...
Sexual selection typically shapes the traits of individuals capable of reproduction. However, in social species, it may also affect the behaviour of non‐reproductive individuals if this increases their inclusive fitness. We examined the potential role of workers during mating in the polyandrous ant Cataglyphis cursor. In this species, mating takes place on the ground near the nest entrance, and workers...
Life is a continuous stream of decisions: organisms are repeatedly confronted with multiple options from which to choose. To make the best decisions and maximise their fitness, individuals need to collect information: from direct interactions with the environment (personal information) or from observing other individuals interacting with the environment (social information). Yet, very little is known...
Variation in community composition over a species' geographic range leads to divergent selection pressures, resulting in interpopulation variation in trait expression. One of the most pervasive selective forces stems from antagonists such as parasites. Whereas hosts of microparasites developed sophisticated immune systems, social parasites select for behavioural host defences. Here, we investigated...
The decision rules that animals use for distinguishing between conspecifics of different age and sex classes are relevant for understanding how closely related species interact in sympatry. In rubyspot damselflies (Hetaerina spp.), the red wing coloration of mature males is hypothesized to be a key trait for sex recognition and competitor recognition within species and the proximate trigger for interspecific...
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