Infanticide is an important mortality factor for juveniles in a wide variety of taxa, and is thought to be an important influence on the evolution of pair bonding and parental care of offspring. Many… (More)
Individual differences in behaviour are ubiquitous in nature. Despite the likely role of selection in maintaining these differences, there are few demonstrations of their fitness consequences in wild… (More)
The immunocompetence-handicap hypothesis suggests that androgen-dependent male characters constitute honest signals of mate and/or rival quality because of the imposed costs through immune… (More)
Sexual dimorphism is widespread in lizards, with the most consistently dimorphic traits being head size (males have larger heads) and trunk length (the distance between the front and hind legs is… (More)
Sex determination is a fundamental biological process, yet its mechanisms are remarkably diverse. In vertebrates, sex can be determined by inherited genetic factors or by the temperature experienced… (More)
Sex determination is a fundamental process governed by diverse mechanisms. Sex ratio selection is commonly implicated in the evolution of sex-determining systems, although formal models are rare.… (More)
In mice and man, females prefer males with a major histocompatibility complex (MHC) genotype different to their own. We tested whether this phenomenon also occurs in the Swedish sand lizard (Lacerta… (More)
Distributions of Earth’s species are changing at accelerating rates, increasingly driven by human-mediated climate change. Such changes are already altering the composition of ecological communities,… (More)
The reproductive cycle in males of the skink, Niveoscincus ocellatus, is characterised by testicular development during summer, followed by mating in autumn. Plasma testosterone concentrations show a… (More)
Behavioral syndromes are correlated suites of behavior, analogous to human personality traits. Most work to date has been taken from limited “snapshots” in space and time, with the implicit… (More)