Interrupting Insects

A reposting of an original article from The Scorpion and the Frog.

What do you think of when I say “communicate”? Most likely, you are imagining people communicating by an auditory mode (talking and listening, making expressive sounds) or by a visual mode (observing body language, reading and writing). As a species, humans inherently rely heavily on our hearing and vision to perceive the world around us and so it makes sense that we communicate with one another using these modalities. But animal species are incredibly diverse in their means of perceiving their worlds and their modes of communication. Because we have been so focused on studying animal signals that we can perceive, we have only recently begun to more actively explore animal communication in these other modes. One of these modes is soundless surface vibrations.

The photo is of an adult Tylopelta gibbera on a host plant stem
(photo (c) Rex Cocroft).

Despite the fact that we do not perceive most animal surface vibration signals around us, vibrational communication is very common, especially among insects and spiders. Rex Cocroft at the University of Missouri at Columbia and Rafa Rodríguez at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee point out in a review of vibrational communication that over 195,000 species of insects communicate using soundless surface vibrations. We can experience many of these substrate vibration signals by broadcasting them through a speaker as an airborne vibration (which we perceive as sound).

Vibrational signals serve a number of functions in the insect worlds. Social insects, like ants, termites, and bees, often use vibrational signals to coordinate foraging. Groups of juvenile thornbug treehoppers vibrate when a predator approaches, calling in the mother to defend them. Males of many species have been found to use vibrational signals to attract females and the females often use these signals to choose a mate.

Vibrational signals are carried through a solid substrate, so they can only travel as far as the substrate is continuous and they are affected by attributes of the substrate (like changes in density). Because of these constraints, most vibrational signals can only travel about the length of a human arm. Many insects that use vibrational communication live on host plants, and it is these host plants that transmit the vibration signals. These animals face many challenges in transmitting their signals to the intended recipient. For example, wind, rain, and environmental sounds can create competing vibrations (background noise). In addition to environmental background noise, the vibrational soundscape of a given plant stem will likely include many signaling individuals, often of many species. Not only are there difficulties in getting your signal to your intended audience, but there are also risks of eavesdropping predators and competitors.

Frédéric Legendre, Peter Marting and Rex Cocroft at the University of Missouri at Columbia, demonstrate the social complexities of vibrational communication in a new study of competitive signaling in a treehopper species, Tylopelta gibbera. Tylopelta gibbera is a small treehopper in the southern United States, Mexico and Guatemala, that only lives on plants from the Desmodium genus. Males will attract and court females with vibrational signals and interested females will respond to the male with vibrational signals of their own. However, many individuals can often be found on a single plant and if two signaling males are present, the receptive female will typically respond to both of them and only mate with one (generally the first one she encounters). What is a competing male to do?

Listen to a male Tylopelta gibbera advertisement signal here.

The researchers performed a series of experiments, in which they observed treehoppers on potted host plants in the lab. With this set-up, they could control the environmental conditions, decide the number of males and females on the plant, record vibrational signals and play them back. They found that once a male signals and detects a female response, he will actively search for her along the plant, alternating signals and steps in a “Marco Polo” mating game until he finds her. Males found the females almost twice as fast if they were the only male on the plant, indicating that the presence of a second male on the plant somehow interferes with their ability to locate the female. Also, when two males were on the plant, they produced a new signal type that was never produced by a lone male on a plant. Males that had no male competition only produced signals that had a whine sound, followed by a series of pulses (and the female would then immediately respond with a harmonic sound of her own). This male signal is called the advertisement signal. Males that had a competing male on the plant would produce an additional signal that was a short tonal note. Interestingly, these males often produced this second signal at the same time that their competitor was advertising himself. Hmmm… could this be a masking signal used to interrupt the competitor? How could you figure that out?

This figure from Legendre, Marting and Cocroft's 2012 Animal Behaviour paper shows
the whine and pulses of a male advertisement signal (top) and a histogram of when the
masking signal occurs in relation to the timing of the advertisement signal (bottom).

First, the researchers asked, “When do males produce this second signal?” The researchers put two males on a plant with one female and recorded their vibrations. They found that in this situation, males typically produced this second signal while his competitor was just beginning the pulse section of his advertisement signal. Next, the researchers played back recordings of male advertisement signals followed by female responses to a lone male on a plant. All of the males tested produced the masking signal during the pulse section of the male advertisement signal on the recording.

Don't you hate it when someone does this?

Next, the researchers asked, “How do females respond to this second signal?” On plants with one female and two males, females didn’t respond as much to advertisement signals overlapped by a second signal as they did to advertisement signals alone. The researchers then played recordings of male advertisement signals to lone females on the plants. Females responded significantly more often if the advertisement signal was not overlapped by a masking signal.

So, male treehoppers get an edge up on getting the girl by interrupting the other competing males. Sneaky buggers!

Want to know more? Check these out:

1. COCROFT, R., & RODRÍGUEZ, R. (2005). The Behavioral Ecology of Insect Vibrational Communication BioScience, 55 (4) DOI: 10.1641/0006-3568(2005)055[0323:TBEOIV]2.0.CO;2

2. Legendre, F., Marting, P., & Cocroft, R. (2012). Competitive masking of vibrational signals during mate searching in a treehopper Animal Behaviour, 83 (2), 361-368 DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2011.11.003

3. A Japanese research team has harnessed this phenomenon to create a remote-control that makes annoying people stop talking. Find out more at the blog Gaines on Brains!

A Snail’s Dart of Love (A Guest Post)

By Jenna Miskowic

Snails that shoot darts. Who would have thought? Turns out, snails have a lot of competition for mates. Females of some snail species have evolved ways to select which males they want to be the father of their eggs. One of these strategies is a female can mate with multiple males and store their sperm. The female can then “choose” which sperm she wants to fertilize her eggs. This affects how males compete for mates. Males want to make sure they are the father to the offspring because they want their genes to be passed on. So male snails have developed ways to increase their chances of paternity.

Euhadra quaesita gliding through foliage. Image by Angus Davison
and Satoshi Chiba posted at Wikimedia Commons.

Enter the dart-bearing land snail, Euhadra quaesita. Snails of this species are simultaneous hermaphrodites that use cross-fertilization. Simultaneous hermaphrodites are animals that have both female and male reproductive tissues and systems. Cross-fertilization means that the snails require a mate. So, when two dart-bearing land snails cross paths and decide they want to mate, they will take their love-dart and pierce it into their mating partner. Because the snails are simultaneous hermaphrodites, they both perform this behavior before exchanging their sperm.

Love darts are composed of a crystalline form of calcium carbonite, which is what sea shells are made of, called aragonite. They are very sharp and pointed so that they are able to pierce the other snail. The dart is covered with a secretion from its mucous glands. When the dart pierces into the other snail, mucus is transported from the dart’s glands into the pierced snail’s blood. This mucus helps increase the amount of sperm being stored in the recipient snail and increases the likelihood of the donor snail being the father to the offspring of the recipient snail. Researchers Kazuki Kimura, Kaito Shibuya, and Satoshi Chiba from Tohoku University in Japan hypothesized that the dart’s mucus would also reduce future matings and promote laying eggs, also called oviposition.

Drawing of Euhadra quaesita’s love-dart. Cross-section on the left and lateral view on the right.
Image by Joris M. Koene and Hinrich Schulenburg posted at Wikimedia Commons.

To test these hypotheses, the researchers conducted two separate experiments. The first experiment focused on the effects of dart shooting and future matings of the recipient snail. Individually, non-virgin adult snails were presented with a non-virgin or virgin adult for their initial mating. In this species, non-virgin adults shoot their darts and virgin snails do not shoot their darts while performing the mating behavior. Thus, the subjects paired with a non-virgin adult were pierced with their partner’s love-dart, and the subjects paired with a virgin adult were not pierced with their partner’s love-dart. Then the subjects were offered to mate again with an unfamiliar non-virgin snail with a high mating motivation caused by individual rearing. They recorded how long the snail subject went, in days, before mating again with another individual of the same species. The researchers found that the amount of time between matings was longer in pierced snails than in ones not pierced.

The second experiment focused on the effect of injected artificial mucus on future matings and promotion of oviposition behavior. Researchers dissected an extract of the mucous glands out of adult snails and combined it with saline solution to create the artificial mucus. There were two groups used in this experiment: (1) adult snails injected with the artificial mucus, also known as the treatment group and (2) adult snails injected with only the saline solution, also known as the control group. They recorded the number of hatched eggs and their parentage. They found that artificial mucus-injected snail pairs mated less often than the control pairs. Additionally, they found that the amount of the snails that laid eggs was larger in the snails injected with artificial mucus. These findings support the researchers’ hypotheses that dart mucus can subdue future matings in its recipients.

So what are the benefits to stabbing your partner with a love dart? Well, if an animal has multiple partners, then it is quite advantageous for the partner to make sure that they are the parent. Mating suppression after being injected with the love dart is one way to fight off the competition. So, beware to all who search for Cupid’s arrow this Valentine’s Day. There may be more to an arrow of love than you realize.


References

Kimura, Shibuya, & Chiba. (2013). The mucus of a land snail love-dart suppresses subsequent matings in darted individuals. Animal Behaviour, 85(3), 631-635.

Friends Without Benefits: A Guest Post

A reposting of an original article by Joseph McDonald

Do you want to avoid the friend zone?
Photo by freedigitalphotos.net.

Guys DREAD the friend zone. That heart-aching moment when the girl you’ve been fawning over for years says you’re the best listener, the sister she never had, or so much better than a diary! You’ve been so nice to her and her friends, listening to all their drama. But that’s just the problem... you’re too nice to too many people.

Research performed by Aaron Lukaszewski and Jim Roney at the University of California – Santa Barbara (UCSB) tested whether preferences for personality traits were dependent on who the target was. In Experiment 1, they asked UCSB undergrads, on a scale from 1 to 7, the degree to which their ideal partner would display certain traits towards them and towards others. These traits included synonyms for kindness (e.g. affectionate, considerate, generous, etc.), trustworthiness (committed, dependable, devoted, etc.), and dominance (aggressive, brave, bold, etc.). Experiment 2 replicated the procedures of Experiment 1. The only difference was that the term “others” was divided into subsets including unspecified, family/friends, opposite sex non-family/friend, and same-sex non-family/friend.

Let’s go over the do’s and don’ts so that future “nice guys” aren’t friend zoned. According to the findings, as graphed below:

Figure from Aaron and Jim's 2010 Evolution and Human Behavior paper.

1. Women generally prefer men who are kind and trustworthy. So, to get that girl, don’t be mean; that’s not the point. This isn’t 3rd grade so don’t pull her hair and expect her to know that you LIKE-like her.

2. Women prefer men who are kinder and more trustworthy towards them than anyone else. So it’s not so much whether you are nice enough, its whether she knows you are nicer to her than anyone else.

3. Women prefer men who display similar amounts of dominance as they do kindness. Dominance isn’t a bad thing, as long as you can distinguish her friends from her foes; especially her male friends.

4. To make things more complicated, women also prefer men who are directly dominant toward other men but don’t display dominance toward them or their family/friends, whether male or female. Some guys may want to befriend these other men, but be weary. Women preferred dominance over kindness in this situation, so kindness may not be enough.

These preferences may have developed to avoid mating with someone willing to expend physical and material resources for extramarital relationships, and invest greater in her and the children. Moderate kindness and trustworthiness toward others will maintain social relationships and prevent detrimental relationships, which may be why women generally prefer kind and trustworthy guys. But in all fairness, women can be in the friend zone too; just look at Deenah and Vinny (excuse the shameful Jersey Shore reference).

There are some things that guys look for in a mate, so ladies, here is a little advice:

1. Guys generally want a mate who is kind and trustworthy, too. We’re not that different; so don’t act a little crazy because you think he likes it. He doesn’t.

2. Guys also prefer women who display dominance toward other women (non- family/friend). Don’t be afraid to put that random girl with the prying eyes in her place.

Contrary to the hypotheses predicting female mate preferences, male mate preferences may have developed as a way to take advantage of strong female-based social hierarchies. No matter what the reasoning, however, if you can
1) be kinder and more trustworthy towards that special someone than anyone else and
2) display dominance over other same-sex people, then feel free to say good-bye to the friend zone!


For further details, check out the original experiment:

Lukaszewski, A., & Roney, J. (2010). Kind toward whom? Mate preferences for personality traits are target specific Evolution and Human Behavior, 31 (1), 29-38 DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2009.06.008

The Weirdest Animals on Earth: 12 Amazing Facts About Platypuses

What IS that? A photo by Stefan Kraft at Wikimedia Commons.

1. Platypuses are so strange, that when British scientists first encountered one, they thought it was a joke: A Governor of New South Wales, Australia, sent a platypus pelt and sketch to British scientists in 1798. Even in their first published scientific description of the species, biologists thought that this duck-beaked, beaver-bodied, web-footed specimen may be some Frankenstein-like creation stitched together as a hoax. But this is only the beginning of their oddities…

2. Platypuses are egg-laying mammals. Mammals are animals that have a backbone, are warm-blooded, and females produce milk for their young. Most females that nurse their young also carry their developing babies in their bodies and give birth to live young… But platypuses don’t play by those rules. Platypuses are monotremes, egg-laying mammals that include the platypus and four species of echidna. Most female mammals have two functional ovaries, but female platypuses, like most female birds, only have a functional left ovary. Once a year, a female platypus may produce a clutch of two or three small, leathery eggs (similar to reptile eggs), that develop in her uterus for 28 days. Because female platypuses don’t even have a vagina, when the eggs are ready, she lays them through her cloaca, an opening that serves for reproduction, peeing and pooping. (In fact, monotreme comes from the Greek for “one hole”). She then curls around them and incubates them for another 10 days until they hatch.

3. Platypuses sweat milk! Not only do female platypuses not have vaginas, they don’t have nipples either! Instead, lactating mothers ooze milk from pores in their skin, which pools in grooves on their bellies so the babies can lap it up. …And they’re not even embarrassed about it!

4. Adult platypuses are toothless. Baby platypuses (that is the actual technical term for them, by the way… not “puggles”, which would be way more fun) are born with teeth but they lose them around the time that they leave the breeding burrow. In their place are rigid-edged keratinized pads that they use as grinding plates. When they catch their prey (worms, bugs, shrimp, and even crayfish), they store it in their cheek pouches and carry it to the surface, where they use gravel to crush it in their toothless maw.

5. The platypus “duck bill” is a sensory organ used to detect electric fields. Muscles and neurons use electrical impulses to function, and these impulses can be detected by electroreceptors. Although common in shark and ray species, electroreception is rare in mammals, only having been discovered in monotremes and the Guiana dolphin. Platypuses have rows of around 40,000 electroreceptors on their highly sensitive bill, which they wave back and forth in the water, much like a hammerhead shark, to determine the location of their prey. It’s a good thing this sense is so sensitive, since they close their eyes, nose and ears every time they dive.

6. Platypuses don’t use their tails like beavers do. Whereas beavers use their large, flat, leathery tails for swimming and slapping the water to send signals, platypuses don’t use their tails for any of that. Platypuses have large, flat tails for storing fat in case of a food shortage. Unlike beaver tails, platypus tails are covered in fur, which the mothers use to snuggle with their incubating eggs.

A platypus ankle spur. Photo by E.Lonnon at Wikimedia Commons.

7. Male platypuses have venomous ankle spurs. Their venom is strong enough to kill small animals and to create excruciating pain in humans. Since only males have it and they produce more venom during the breeding season, we think its main function may be to compete for mates and breeding territories.

8. Platypuses are knuckle-walkers with a reptilian gait. Although they are well-built for swimming with their webbed feet and legs on the sides of their bodies, these traits make it quite awkward to get around on dry land. To walk, they pull in their webbing and walk on their knuckles, exposing their claws. Like reptiles and salamanders, platypuses flex their spines from side-to-side, supported by their sprawling legs.

9. Platypuses have unusually low body temperatures. As unusual as they are, platypuses are still mammals, which are defined, in part, by their ability to generate most of their own body heat with their metabolism. Platypuses do this as well, but whereas most mammals maintain body temperatures between 37-40 degrees C (99-104 degrees F), platypuses are happy with a body temperature of 32 degrees C (90 degrees F). This lower metabolism reduces the amount of calories they need to eat.

10. They have no stomach. Stomachs are specialized protein-digesting chambers of digestive tracts that contain protein-digesting enzymes and acids to activate them. Not all animals have them, but most carnivores do. The most common exceptions to this rule are fish… and platypuses. Why? We don’t know for sure, but many of these animals consume diets high in calcium carbonate, which is a natural antacid. If their own diet would constantly neutralize their stomach acid, then the stomach really isn’t going to do them any good anyway.

11. They have 10 sex chromosomes! Most mammals have two sex chromosomes, one from each parent. An individual that has two X chromosomes is usually female and an individual that has one X and one Y chromosome is usually male. Thus, female mammals pass along an X chromosome to each offspring and males can pass along an X or a Y. But platypuses are not content to be normal in any way…They have 10 sex chromosomes: 5 from mom and 5 from dad. All 5 chromosomes from mom are Xs, whereas a male sperm either contains 5 Xs or 5 Ys. Birds also have two sex chromosomes, but in birds, individuals with two of the same type are usually male and individuals with different chromosomes are usually female. Their system is called ZW, where the mammalian system is XY. The platypus X chromosome is more similar than the X chromosome of other mammals to the bird Z chromosome.

12. The platypus genome is as much of a hodgepodge as its body. Only 80% of the platypus’ genes are like other mammals. Some of their genes have only previously been found in birds, reptiles, fish, or amphibians.

To learn about more weird animals, go here.

References:

Scheich, H., Langner, G., Tidemann, C., Coles, R., & Guppy, A. (1986). Electroreception and electrolocation in platypus Nature, 319 (6052), 401-402 DOI: 10.1038/319401a0

Warren, W., Hillier, L., Marshall Graves, J., Birney, E., Ponting, C., Grützner, F., Belov, K., Miller, W., Clarke, L., Chinwalla, A., Yang, S., Heger, A., Locke, D., Miethke, P., Waters, P., Veyrunes, F., Fulton, L., Fulton, B., Graves, T., Wallis, J., Puente, X., López-Otín, C., Ordóñez, G., Eichler, E., Chen, L., Cheng, Z., Deakin, J., Alsop, A., Thompson, K., Kirby, P., Papenfuss, A., Wakefield, M., Olender, T., Lancet, D., Huttley, G., Smit, A., Pask, A., Temple-Smith, P., Batzer, M., Walker, J., Konkel, M., Harris, R., Whittington, C., Wong, E., Gemmell, N., Buschiazzo, E., Vargas Jentzsch, I., Merkel, A., Schmitz, J., Zemann, A., Churakov, G., Ole Kriegs, J., Brosius, J., Murchison, E., Sachidanandam, R., Smith, C., Hannon, G., Tsend-Ayush, E., McMillan, D., Attenborough, R., Rens, W., Ferguson-Smith, M., Lefèvre, C., Sharp, J., Nicholas, K., Ray, D., Kube, M., Reinhardt, R., Pringle, T., Taylor, J., Jones, R., Nixon, B., Dacheux, J., Niwa, H., Sekita, Y., Huang, X., Stark, A., Kheradpour, P., Kellis, M., Flicek, P., Chen, Y., Webber, C., Hardison, R., Nelson, J., Hallsworth-Pepin, K., Delehaunty, K., Markovic, C., Minx, P., Feng, Y., Kremitzki, C., Mitreva, M., Glasscock, J., Wylie, T., Wohldmann, P., Thiru, P., Nhan, M., Pohl, C., Smith, S., Hou, S., Renfree, M., Mardis, E., & Wilson, R. (2008). Genome analysis of the platypus reveals unique signatures of evolution Nature, 453 (7192), 175-183 DOI: 10.1038/nature06936

Catch Him If You Can (A Guest Post)

By Caitlin Lockard

When playing Frisbee with your dog, do you ever wonder how they have the ability to catch it so effortlessly? The art of being able to figure out where something like a Frisbee is headed requires some crazy math skills. Ostracods are one kind of animal that puts their wicked math skills to the test while finding a mate.

The image above of a female ostracod was provided by Trevor Rivers.

You’ve never heard of an ostracod you say? Ostracods are small crustaceans, which basically means they have lots of legs and are covered by a hard shell. Male ostracods can be seen roaming throughout the ocean trying to enchant females with light displays. Typically, just after sunset, males begin their light displays, which consist of two phases. The first phase is the bright phase, which is short. The goal here is to signal to the female that “I’m here, single (except all my buddies that I brought with me of course) and ready to mingle”. The second phase is where males spiral up in a helix while pulsing repeatedly. This phase is much dimmer and is used by females to choose a mate. But exactly how do female ostracods go about catching the moving and light-pulsing man of her dreams?

Scientists, Trevor Rivers of the University of Kansas and Jim Morin of Cornell University, set off to explore if female ostracods try to intercept the moving and pulsing males or if they just chase them. In order to conduct this experiment, immature female ostracods were collected off the shore of Southwater Caye in Belize. After catching the ostracods, females were put into tanks and raised to maturity, ensuring that all the females were sexually mature virgins. Rivers and Morin put an LED light behind the different tanks in order to mimic an actual mating display. The LED light looked like a string of Christmas lights pulsing from bottom to top, mimicking the males’ helical light display. In the control group, there was an LED light placed behind the tank, however it was turned off. The duo questioned whether or not the LED light show was able to mimic the display put on by male ostracods. Also, they questioned how females respond to the males’ display by measuring the height at which females intercepted the LED light, how straight of a line the female swam in, if the female swam at an angle, and what direction the female swam in. Check out a video here.

The scientists found that the LED light was able to mimic the helical phase that male ostracods put on well enough for the females to respond. Females in the control group merely swam at the same height, as there was no reason for her to waste her energy with no “male” around. However, females in the experimental group had to think on their feet to figure out where their male crush was heading. They swam directly toward but slightly above the “male” than when there was no “mate” around. If the female merely headed to the same spot where her “male” previously was, she would miss him. Instead, she had to anticipate where he was going next and head that direction.

What’s the moral of the story here? If you’re a female ostracod, your man will always be on the move, so you better have some gnarly geometry skills in order to track him down.


Work Cited:

Rivers, T., & Morin, J. (2013). Female ostracods respond to and intercept artificial conspecific male luminescent courtship displays Behavioral Ecology, 24 (4), 877-887 DOI: 10.1093/beheco/art022

Suicidal Sex

A brown antechinus. Males of this species mate like crazy
for two weeks, then die. Photo by Alan at Wikimedia.

Although most species breed repeatedly over their lifetimes, a select few invest everything they’ve got in a single reproductive bout, after which they keel over and die. This strategy, called semelparity, can be beneficial in species that can have many offspring at once and that are not likely to survive long enough for a second breeding attempt anyway. It is most commonly seen in plants, invertebrates and some fish. It is a rare strategy in mammals, in part because mammalian females do not have many offspring at once and they need to live long enough to care for their young after they are born, which dying early would obviously prevent. Despite this, there are over a dozen species of mammals of which all the males die after their one and only breeding season. How could this possibly be adaptive?

Today at Accumulating Glitches, I talk about how patterns of insect abundance and competitive sperm have pushed some mammals to mate themselves to death! Check out the article here.

Loving to Death

The brown antechinus may look like a
mouse - but that is where the similarities
end. Photo by Glen Fergus at Wikimedia.

Although most animal species breed multiple times throughout their lives, a few oddballs put everything they've got into a single reproductive season, after which they promptly die. This is a rare strategy (for obvious reasons), especially in mammals. One Australian mammal, the brown antechinus, is just odd enough to pull it off.

The brown antechinus is a small insectivorous mouse-sized critter from Australia that in fact is not a mouse at all. It is a marsupial; but unlike kangaroos and koalas, females do not carry their young in a pouch, but rather let them hang off their eight teats for four months. All males die when they are 11 months old (if not sooner) after a single 2-3 week long mating season during which they do little else than mate as often as possible. The mating season leaves all the males (whether mated or not) sterile, coursing with stress hormones, immunosuppressed, and riddled with microorganisms and parasites. Shortly thereafter all the males die, balding and bleeding messes.

The reproductive strategy of putting everything you've got into a single mating season and then dying is only an advantage if you can have many offspring in that single reproductive event. Male brown antechinuses can only succeed in this suicidal mating strategy if they father many of the young of many of the females. As a result, both male and female brown antechinuses are promiscuous (mate with many individuals).

Male brown antechinuses are generally bigger than females, and DNA testing has shown us that in the wild, larger males and males with bigger testes impregnate the most females. Diana Fisher and Andrew Cockburn from Australian National University tested whether larger male brown antechinuses were more likely to get the girls because females were more likely to choose them or because they were outcompeting other males.

Diana and Andrew trapped brown antechinuses and brought them into the lab. In one test, they placed three males in separate nest boxes next to one another in an arena and allowed females to choose among them and mate with whichever one she chose. Surprisingly, when presented with this choice, females did not consistently choose the largest males. They didn't even check them all out - The females mated with whatever male happened to be in the first nest box she entered.

When the researchers put three males into a single nest box and allowed the females to mate, she almost always immediately mated with one of the three males. The next day, the researchers put the female in a nest box with either the two losers from the day before or with two randomly chosen males she did not know. On this second day, females presented with two strangers immediately mated with one male, whereas females presented with the two losers from the day before were more likely to spend more time evading both males, but often eventually mated with one of them. On the third day, the researchers put the female in a nest box with either the loser from the previous two days or with another randomly chosen stranger. Nine out of ten females paired with a stranger mated with him on this third day, whereas only one female paired with a double-loser was willing to mate with him at all. Males that successfully mated on the first day were generally the largest of the three. Loser males that mated on the second day were generally the second-largest and unsuccessful males were generally the smallest.

Interestingly, when given a choice of males one at a time, female brown antechinuses do not seem to care at all about male size. But when males are directly competing with one another, the largest male seems to get the girl. It appears that body size plays a role in the dominance interactions among the males, and that females are paying attention to how the males relate to one another. Additionally, larger males that were more successful in mating also lived longer and had fewer parasites. This could be because it is more stressful to be a loser than to be a winner. Stress increases the production of stress hormones, which in turn reduces immune function. In all of these ways, bigger males are more likely to father more young, who in turn will be more likely to grow up to be big males too... but not for long...


Want to know more? Check these out:

Fisher, D., & Cockburn, A. (2005). The large-male advantage in brown antechinuses: female choice, male dominance, and delayed male death Behavioral Ecology, 17 (2), 164-171 DOI: 10.1093/beheco/arj012

Doing it to death: suicidal sex in "marsupial mice" at The Conversation

Friends Without Benefits: A Guest Post

By Joseph McDonald

Do you want to avoid the friend zone?
Photo by freedigitalphotos.net.

Guys DREAD the friend zone. That heart-aching moment when the girl you’ve been fawning over for years says you’re the best listener, the sister she never had, or so much better than a diary! You’ve been so nice to her and her friends, listening to all their drama. But that’s just the problem... you’re too nice to too many people.

Research performed by Aaron Lukaszewski and Jim Roney at the University of California – Santa Barbara (UCSB) tested whether preferences for personality traits were dependent on who the target was. In Experiment 1, they asked UCSB undergrads, on a scale from 1 to 7, the degree to which their ideal partner would display certain traits towards them and towards others. These traits included synonyms for kindness (e.g. affectionate, considerate, generous, etc.), trustworthiness (committed, dependable, devoted, etc.), and dominance (aggressive, brave, bold, etc.). Experiment 2 replicated the procedures of Experiment 1. The only difference was that the term “others” was divided into subsets including unspecified, family/friends, opposite sex non-family/friend, and same-sex non-family/friend.

Let’s go over the do’s and don’ts so that future “nice guys” aren’t friend zoned. According to the findings, as graphed below:

Figure from Aaron and Jim's 2010 Evolution and Human Behavior paper.

1. Women generally prefer men who are kind and trustworthy. So, to get that girl, don’t be mean; that’s not the point. This isn’t 3rd grade so don’t pull her hair and expect her to know that you LIKE-like her.

2. Women prefer men who are kinder and more trustworthy towards them than anyone else. So it’s not so much whether you are nice enough, its whether she knows you are nicer to her than anyone else.

3. Women prefer men who display similar amounts of dominance as they do kindness. Dominance isn’t a bad thing, as long as you can distinguish her friends from her foes; especially her male friends.

4. To make things more complicated, women also prefer men who are directly dominant toward other men but don’t display dominance toward them or their family/friends, whether male or female. Some guys may want to befriend these other men, but be weary. Women preferred dominance over kindness in this situation, so kindness may not be enough.

These preferences may have developed to avoid mating with someone willing to expend physical and material resources for extramarital relationships, and invest greater in her and the children. Moderate kindness and trustworthiness toward others will maintain social relationships and prevent detrimental relationships, which may be why women generally prefer kind and trustworthy guys. But in all fairness, women can be in the friend zone too; just look at Deenah and Vinny (excuse the shameful Jersey Shore reference).

There are some things that guys look for in a mate, so ladies, here is a little advice:

1. Guys generally want a mate who is kind and trustworthy, too. We’re not that different; so don’t act a little crazy because you think he likes it. He doesn’t.

2. Guys also prefer women who display dominance toward other women (non- family/friend). Don’t be afraid to put that random girl with the prying eyes in her place.

Contrary to the hypotheses predicting female mate preferences, male mate preferences may have developed as a way to take advantage of strong female-based social hierarchies. No matter what the reasoning, however, if you can
1) be kinder and more trustworthy towards that special someone than anyone else and
2) display dominance over other same-sex people, then feel free to say good-bye to the friend zone!


For further details, check out the original experiment:

Lukaszewski, A., & Roney, J. (2010). Kind toward whom? Mate preferences for personality traits are target specific Evolution and Human Behavior, 31 (1), 29-38 DOI: 10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2009.06.008

Competitive Females

Paula Broadwell, the aggressive competitor.
Photo from her Facebook page.

By now, you’ve probably heard all about Paula Broadwell, the woman that seduced the notoriously disciplined CIA director, four-star US Army general, husband and father, General David Petraeus. What kind of a woman might be able to sway a man that has such admirable self-control? Broadwell was Petraeus’ biographer, a West Point graduate with a Harvard graduate degree, an Army Reservist thrice recalled to active duty, a fitness champion, Ironman triathlete and even a machine gun model. Her accomplishments are clearly impressive, but maybe the key comes down to her competitive nature. I mean, she did send several threatening e-mails to an attractive socialite and Petraeus family friend, warning her to stay away from her (other) man.

When we think about competing for mates, we generally think about males competing for females and breeding territories with horns to duke it out, or elaborate feathers to show off, or dance-offs to demonstrate their physical abilities. But females often have to compete for the high-quality males and breeding territories too. And many of the concepts that apply to males competing for females have been found to also apply to females competing for males.

A dark-eyed junco thinking
"What you lookin' at?".
Photo by Kristal Cain.

As much as we know about males competing with one another, we know surprisingly little about females competing with one another, although they clearly do. Kristal Cain and Ellen Ketterson at Indiana University sought out to shed light on female competition and its effect on breeding success. They did this with female Carolina dark-eyed juncos, a socially monogamous songbird species in which both parents care for the young. They were curious whether more aggressive females would also have other competitive traits, like large body size. They also wondered whether aggressive females would have better breeding success.

The researchers caught female juncos to measure and put identifying leg bands on them. They then released them and spent their nesting season looking for their nests. When they found a nest, they identified whose nest it was by the female’s leg bands. The researchers tested how aggressive females were towards competing females by placing a caged female within 3 meters of a subject’s nest and watching to see if she swooped at the caged female. Then they kept an eye on the nest to see if the chicks all survived until they fledged (left the nest on their own) or if the nest was destroyed (usually by a predator) before the chicks fledged.

A female junco in full-on attack mode. Photo by Kristal Cain.

Females that were more aggressive towards “competing” females tended to be bigger and had chicks that were more likely to fledge. Now, if this were a story about competitive males, we might think big aggressive males with more successful chicks might have higher testosterone. Alternatively, low testosterone is often found in males that are better fathers. But these are females… Does it even make sense to talk about testosterone in females? Of course it does! Turns out, males don’t have a monopoly on testosterone; females have it too.

The researchers drew blood from the females and then gave them a “testosterone challenge” by injecting them with a hormone called gonadotropin-releasing hormone (or GnRH for short). GnRH is a trigger that causes a series of biological events that result in the gonads producing more hormones, including testosterone. The researchers then drew a second blood sample to measure how much testosterone levels changed in response to the GnRH injection.

More aggressive females produced more testosterone in response to the GnRH injection than did less aggressive females. This same effect has also been shown to be true of males behaving aggressively towards each other. I guess males and females really aren’t all that different, eh? But interestingly, females that produced more testosterone in response to the GnRH challenge also had more successful nests.

It’s important to keep in mind that these results are correlational. Maybe testosterone makes females bigger and more aggressive and better mothers. Or perhaps having a temper increases your testosterone production. Or maybe some other hormone that increases in response to GnRH (there are many) is responsible for the effects. In any case, females that are bigger and more aggressive and have more successful offspring also produce more testosterone in response to a GnRH injection.

Paula Broadwell shows off her aggressive abilities in this KRISS ARMS video
(gif'd by Michael Pakradooni).

As far as we know, no one has given Paula Broadwell a testosterone challenge, but she undoubtedly has a number of correlated competitive traits. Paula Broadwell is a competitive, physically fit, attractive parent who has shown that she can out-compete the spouses of high-quality mates… But then again, so is David Petraeus.

Want to know more? Check this out:

Cain, K., & Ketterson, E. (2011). Competitive females are successful females; phenotype, mechanism, and selection in a common songbird Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 66 (2), 241-252 DOI: 10.1007/s00265-011-1272-5

Mmm… The Scent of a Stud

Your smell can say a lot about you… How often you bathe, for example. But in many species, smells can communicate much more… What else might they be saying? And how do you ask them?

What secrets do we hide
when we put on deodorant
and perfume? Image by
freedigitalphotos.net.

Field crickets are one of many species that use pheromones, compounds released by an animal that affect the physiology and/or behavior of others of the same species. Female field crickets can recognize individual males by the pheromones they produce… That is pretty specific information! If females can smell who a male is, what else can she tell about him based on his pheromones?

Male field crickets fight for and defend both females and shelters. Furthermore, females are very picky about what males they mate with and tend to go for males who are better fighters. Raine Kortet and Ann Hedrick at the University of California at Davis asked female field crickets whether they could smell the difference between winners and losers.

Raine and Ann took pairs of male crickets that were the same age and size and placed each one on a separate piece of filter paper in a petri dish for 24 hours. This process infuses each filter paper with that particular crickets’ pheromones. Then they put each of the two pheromone-infused filter papers, plus a third clean filter paper, into an arena. They placed a female in the arena and timed how long she spent on each of the three filter papers. Then they repeated the whole process again with another 58 pairs of males.

Next, Raine and Ann put the size-matched pairs of males together in the same arena and allowed them to compete. Cricket fights generally involve wrestling and biting and then one of the crickets will retreat and avoid his dominant competitor. At this point, they were assigned the ranks of “dominant” (winner) and “subordinate” (loser).

This drawing by Edward Julius Detmold from the 1921 book
Fabre's Book of Insects depicts a dominant cricket defending his
shelter while a subordinate cricket retreats. Image from Wikimedia.

Females spent way more time on the pheromone-infused filter papers than on the clean filter papers. But even more fascinating, the females spent more time on the filter papers infused with the dominant male smell than the papers that smelled like losers. Remember, this was before the males even competed. So now female crickets can predict the future?! …Yeah, kinda. Females can smell which males will win.

But maybe this isn’t as mysterious as it looks at first glance. Pheromones are chemical compounds created by the body – the very same body that wins or loses fights. Bodies that are not in good shape may not be able to produce high-quality pheromones. Another possibility is that the same hormones that influence dominant behavior and fighting ability may also influence pheromones. Or maybe males that are more energetic simply move around more and deposit more scent on the paper. In any case, by picking up the scent of the dominant male, females may be able to choose a mate that is a good fighter, in good physical health, and who may pass these traits on to her offspring.

When you think about it that way, smells can contain a lot of information… So be careful what signals you’re putting out there.

Want to know more? Check this out:

Kortet, R., & Hedrick, A. (2005). The scent of dominance: female field crickets use odour to predict the outcome of male competition Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 59, 77-83 DOI: 10.1007/s00265-005-0011-1

Baby, You Light Up My World Like Nobody Else: A Guest Post

One Direction was inspired by the brightly
shining love of the bioluminescent ostracod.
Photo by Fiona McKinlay at Wikimedia.

by Rachel Wang

You might not have guessed that the song lyrics of the band One Direction could apply to the courtship of bioluminescent marine animals, but the female ostracod crustacean (relatives of crabs and shrimp) might want to sing her heart out when she finds a bright guy to light up her world. 

This month's cover of the Journal of
Experimental Biology features a picture
of one of Trevor and Jim's ostracods!

Bioluminescent ostracods, also called “marine firefleas,” are tiny creatures (at most just 2 mm!) that live at the bottom of the ocean and have the awesome ability to light up the water in the western Caribbean with their natural bioluminescence. Males wait until it’s completely dark to put on a light show for the ladies. They secrete molecules that react with the water and produce pulses of bright blue light. To court females, males flash brightly 3-4 times in the same spot before swimming up in a spiral pattern and producing up to 16 flashes. Then they do this over and over for an hour! Talk about a bright time!

Males have three different types of courtship tactics as they compete for a mate. Males who initiate a display are described as “leading,” males who synchronize their flashes with another male are “following,” and males who stay close to another guy without doing any flashing are “sneaking.” Males aren’t just capable of all three tactics – they can also switch between tactics within seconds, even multiple times within a single 12-second-long display!

You can see an example of a light display here:
Video provided by Trevor Rivers

Jim Morin at Cornell University and Trevor Rivers previously at Cornell (now at Bowdoin College) provided an illuminating look at what affects a male’s decision to lead, follow, or sneak. Since the males only show off in the dark, Trevor and Jim used infrared video to shed some light on the situation and track each male’s movement, speed, and distance to other males. They randomly picked five males (a normal group size) and observed their behavior for 30 minutes. They looked at how much time each male spent leading, following, or sneaking, as well as the distance and angle to other males.

Pay close attention to see some followers in this infrared video:
Video provided by Trevor Rivers

The researchers found that once one male decided to be the leader and initiate a display, the other males’ choice between following and sneaking was strongly predicted by their distance to the leader – mainly vertical distance! The figure below illustrates what they found. The leader is represented by the point where the vertical and horizontal lines cross. At 8 cm above the leader, males were equally likely to follow or sneak (green area). Those more than 8 cm above the leader (the blue area) were more likely to follow, while males who were less than 8 cm above (pink area) were more likely to sneak! 

This figure shows that males way above the leader (at the center of the circle) choose to
follow (i.e. "entrain"), whereas males near the leader choose to sneak. The graph on the
left (a) shows the starting position and eventual tactic of each male. The graph on the
right (b) shows where each male was when he started using his chosen tactic. Figure
from Rivers, T.J., & Morin, J.G. (2009). Plasticity of male mating behavior in a marine
bioluminescent ostracod in both time and space. Animal Behavior, 78(3): 723-734.

So why would vertical distance make a difference in picking a tactic? Trevor and Jim offer some possible explanations. Males who are closer to the leader tend choose sneakiness. Rather than wasting energy on a flashy show, they focus all their attention on snatching a female. Males who are farther away from the leader tend to follow. They decide to go for it, and synchronize their flashes with the leader to compete for the Best & Brightest Award, with the winner receiving the prize of a lovely female mate. Followers also swim farther out, which could help them intercept females approaching from the side and increase their chances of scoring a touchdown. The bottom line is that these male bioluminescent ostracods are always checking out their competition and quickly deciding on the best move!

So what can we learn from this enlightening tale? Guys, keep your friends close and your competition closer. Imitating or sticking close to the guy who’s got it all could pay off in the end. Just remember: stalking your competition? That might work for bioluminescent ostracods, but it’s not sexy by human standards.

If you’re interested in more info, check out:

1. University of Wisconsin-Lacrosse’s great, informative website on bioluminescent ostracods

2. Rivers, T.J., & Morin, J.G. (2009). Plasticity of male mating behavior in a marine bioluminescent ostracod in both time and space Animal Behavior, 78 (3), 723-734 DOI: 10.1016/j.anbehav.2009.06.020

Red-Eyed Rump Shaker

A photo of a red-eyed treefrog taken
by Carey James Balboa at Wikimedia.

At night, male red-eyed treefrogs gather on saplings over Central American forest ponds to show off their stuff for the ladies, producing self-advertising “chack” calls. Despite the fact that they gather in groups, they defend their calling territories from flirtatious male competition. Females assess the available males and usually mate with a single male, who mounts her and clings on for dear life in a behavior called amplexus until she lays eggs that he then fertilizes. Occasionally, multiple males will try to mate with the same female at the same time, which usually results in two ticked-off male frogs.

What does an angry red-eyed treefrog do, you may ask? A mildly irritated treefrog will likely produce territorial “chuckle” calls, to let rivals know this is his favorite calling-plant and they’d better step-off. But a really ticked-off red-eyed treefrog rapidly lifts and lowers his hind end in a behavior called tremulation.

 
"Step off, I'm doing the hump!" Video by Michael Caldwell.

 Not much is known about this tremulation behavior. Is it something they do just to release anxiety or is it a communication signal? If it is a communication signal, is it a visual signal or a vibrational signal or both? And what exactly might it communicate?

Michael Caldwell, Karen Warkentin and Gregory McDaniel from Boston University, and Gregory Johnston from Flinders University in Australia, set out to ask the red-eyed treefrog if the tremulations were a communication signal and what they may mean. But without Dr. Doolittle’s powers of talking to the animals, how can scientists determine what and how animals are communicating?

First, the researchers observed natural interactions between males at choruses in the wild and recorded everything they did. They found that male red-eyed treefrogs will often approach another male while making “chuckles” and “chacks”. These males also tremulated in every aggressive interaction observed. Some of these males kicked with their back legs and some encounters even escalated to wrestling. Eventually (usually anywhere from a minute to an hour later, but occasionally several hours later), one of the males would submit by fleeing the plant or remaining silent and motionless. The dominant male would then resume his self-advertising “chack” calls. So males use tremulation in aggressive contexts with other males, but does that mean that it is a signal?

Males that won encounters tremulated more and used more
"chack" and "chuckle" calls than did males that lost encounters.
Figure from Caldwell et al. 2010 Current Biology paper.

The researchers then conducted staged contests by placing pairs of calling males on the same sapling. In these staged contests, males showed all the same aggressive behaviors the researchers had observed in natural conditions, and most ended in a wrestling match. The males that won their encounter produced more calls and more tremulations than did males that lost their encounter (Check out the graph above). So tremulations are used in the context of aggression with other males and winners tremulate more than losers. It looks like these tremulations are an aggressive communication signal, but to know for sure, we need to know if other males respond to them. And are tremulations a visual signal, a vibrational signal, or both?

So the researchers had to get creative and take it one step further: They put a robotic frog on a vibrating shaker that could mimic the visual display of a tremulation. They attached a separate vibrating shaker to the plant to mimic the vibrations of a tremulation. Now, they could look at the effects of the visual and vibrational components of the tremulation behavior separately!



Robofrog! Notice the jointed limbs and the metal rod sticking out of the robot's
belly. That rod is connected to a shaker that moves the robot so it looks like
he is performing a tremulation display. A separate shaker is connected to the
sapling to send the vibrational component of the display. This way, the
researchers can expose frogs to the visual component and the vibrational
component of the tremulation display separately. Photo by Michael Caldwell.

The researchers compared male red-eyed treefrogs that were exposed to (1) nothing, (2) a frog robot that does nothing, (3) a frog robot that “tremulates” with both plant vibrations and visible movement, (4) “tremulation” vibrations in the plant, without the frog robot, (5) a frog robot that moves it’s butt up and down but doesn’t produce vibrations, and (6) white noise vibrations in the plant (this is just a generic vibration).

Males responded aggressively to the imitated tremulation vibrations, visual or combined but not to any of the other treatments. This suggests that tremulations are a communication signal that rival males respond to. Interestingly, males only tremulated in response to tremulation vibrations. This suggests that the vibrational component is important to sending the full aggressive signal.

Males have aggressive responses to the visual display alone,
the vibration alone, and the visual display combined with the
vibration. But males only tremulated in response to vibrational
signals. Figure from Caldwell et al. 2010 Current Biology paper.

The sensitivity to soundless surface vibrations is widespread among animals, but we know very little about vibrational communication, especially in vertebrates. Michael, Gregory, Gregory and Karen have cleverly shown us that male red-eyed treefrogs use vibrational signals in contests with each other. How many other species will we discover using this silent channel of communication if we just listen?

Want to know more? Check this out:

Caldwell MS, Johnston GR, McDaniel JG, & Warkentin KM (2010). Vibrational signaling in the agonistic interactions of red-eyed treefrogs. Current biology : CB, 20 (11), 1012-7 PMID: 20493702