0000000000458447
AUTHOR
Emily R. Burdfield-steel
Do the benefits of polyandry scale with outbreeding?
Lay Summary Mating can be both costly and dangerous. Despite this, females of many species typically mate more than once and with different males. We found that female seed bugs only benefit from mating with more than 1 male if one of her mates was a different species. Females needed only 1 mating with her own species to maximize her fitness. Thus, multiple mating may be adaptive in areas where the 2 species coexist.
Testing the effectiveness of pyrazine defences against spiders
Insects live in a dangerous world and may fall prey to a wide variety of predators, encompassing multiple taxa. As a result, selection may favour defences that are effective against multiple predator types, or target-specific defences that can reduce predation risk from particular groups of predators. Given the variation in sensory systems and hunting tactics, in particular between vertebrate and invertebrate predators, it is not always clear whether defences, such as chemical defences, that are effective against one group will be so against another. Despite this, the majority of research to date has focused on the role of a single predator species when considering the evolution of defended…