M D Jennions

..As in the medical sciences, non-significant results may take longer to publish and studies with both small sample sizes and non-significant results may be less likely to be published...

..Hence, many secondary sexual characters are likely to be condition dependent in their expression...

..We suggest that future literature reviews assess the robustness of their main conclusions by correcting for potential publication bias using the 'trim and fill' method...

..Although polyandry may confer indirect genetic benefits, our results provide no evidence that female T. commodus gain these benefits by biasing paternity toward genetically more compatible males through postcopulatory mechanisms...

..It might, however, signal components of male fitness that are not affected by changes in heterozygosity...

..Finally, after controlling for relative male size, monandrous females' sons were more successful when directly competing for a mate...

..Our results suggest that female preference for local over foreign males in blue-eyes may depend on how genetically and geographically separated populations are from one another...

..We suggest that h is not obviously superior to other indices that rely on citations and publication counts to assess research performance...

..This preference was, however, only expressed when females chose between two large males; for small males, there was no effect of genital size on female association time...

..Males who ensure that their neighbour remains female could benefit through increased opportunity for future reproductive success and lower boundary maintenance costs...

..Furthermore, males appear to adjust their waving according to the information available: eavesdropping males wave 12 times faster than non-courting males but only 1.7 times slower than males in full visual contact with the female...

..elegans neighbour during simulated intrusions by intermediate sized U. elegans males (50% of cases for both). Helping was, however, significantly less likely to occur when the intruder was a U. mjoebergi male (only 15% of cases)...

..commodus prefer males with a higher calling effort, inbred males will suffer reductions in mating success. Females who base mate choice on call rate are therefore using a signal correlated with male heterozygosity and/or condition...

..This cooperation supports the prediction that it is sometimes less costly to assist a familiar neighbour than to renegotiate boundaries with a new, and possibly stronger, neighbour...

..Our results suggest that males may also respond adaptively to changes in the costs of choosing...

..The threefold increase in offspring survival is not negated by a decline in maternal lifespan and is too large to be offset by an equivalent decline in the reproductive performance of surviving offspring...

..There was, however, a significant effect due to the mechanical advantage the owner gained through access to the burrow during fights (r=0.48, p<0.005)...

..Using simple experiments, we provide the first evidence of the rules determining when territorial coalitions form. Our results support recent models that suggest that these coalitions arise from by-product mutualism...

..We hope that our worked example will clarify a recent debate about how best to measure sexual selection...

..Sexually selected traits clearly vary in their susceptibility to inbreeding depression...

..The low-level persistence of left-clawed males is therefore unlikely to involve a frequency-dependent advantage associated with fighting experience...

..A recent study has used inbreeding depression to gain insight into the maintenance of additive genetic variation in populations, with intriguing implications for good genes models of sexual selection...

..These experiments indicate that stabilizing sexual selection may play an important role in the evolution of male call properties in natural populations of T. commodus...

..Moreover, they caution the use of longevity as a proxy for fitness in sexual selection studies, and suggest avenues for future research on the relationship between sexual attractiveness and ageing...

..Our results suggest that postcopulatory mate guarding has evolved via sexual conflict over insemination times rather than through genetic benefits of biasing paternity toward vigorous males, as has been previously suggested...

....

..Collectively, our findings directly support the antagonistic pleiotropy model of aging and suggest an important role for sexual selection in the aging process...

..Collectively, our findings suggest an important role for resource acquisition in generating variation in mate choice behavior...

..Finally, we suggest potentially fruitful directions for future theoretical and empirical research...

..They also reveal the value of estimating the net fitness consequences of a mating strategy by including measures of offspring quality in estimates of fitness...

..We discuss the general importance of nonlinear selection in the honest signaling of genetic quality...

..In most species one sex is more reluctant to mate than the other. Standard explanations invoking potential reproductive rates have shortcomings that are illustrated by a new study of eager female and reluctant male antelopes...

..in condition? (3) How much do GEIs reduce the signalling value of male condition? (4) How does GEI affect the multivariate version of the lek paradox? (5) Have mating biases for high-condition males evolved because of indirect benefits?..

....