Search results for "valinta"

Evolution of external female genital mutilation : why do males harm their mates?

2017

Sperm competition may select for male reproductive traits that influence female mating or oviposition rate. These traits may induce fitness costs to the female; however, they may be costly for the males as well as any decrease in female fitness also affects male fitness. Male adaptations to sperm competition manipulate females by altering not only female behaviour or physiology, but also female morphology. In orb-weaving spiders, mating may entail mutilation of external structures of the female genitalia, which prevents genital coupling with subsequent males. Here, we present a game theoretical model showing that external female genital mutilation is favoured even under relatively high cost…

Effects of gender inequality and wealth inequality on within-sex mating competition under hypergyny

2022

Resources are often central to the formation and persistence of human consortships, and to the evolutionary fitness consequences of those consortships. As a result, the distribution of resources within a society should influence the number and quality of mating opportunities an individual of given status/wealth experiences. In particular, in a wide variety of societies, both contemporary and historic, women have been shown to prefer mates of higher rather than lower status and wealth, a pattern known as ‘hypergyny’. Such status-dependent within-sex competition is influenced not only by the preferences individuals express but also by the distribution of resources within and between sexes. Em…

Exploring Finnish Guidance Counselors’ Conceptions of Career Management Skills

2020

This article reports the findings from a phenomenographic investigation into guidance counselors’ conceptions of career management skills (CMS). The results show that CMS was conceived as (a) information-based knowledge, (b) personal skills development, (c) interpersonal skills development, and (d) autonomous application of skills. The differences appeared along six dimensions of variation that included awareness of CMS, emphasis, promotion of CMS, teaching practice, assessment, and attitude. The findings give us a more profound understanding of critical aspects that may have an important role in the development of individual’s CMS.

Rationalising public support for private early childhood education and care: the case of Finland

2019

In Finland, early childhood education and care (ECEC) is traditionally publicly provided. However, private ECEC provision has increased during the past decade, largely as a result of financial support from the public sector. Drawing on qualitative interviews with municipal decision-makers, this article identifies three frames within which publicly subsidised private ECEC provision and marketisation are rationalised: the pragmatic frame, the government frame and the choice frame. The results show that even though market logics and tendencies seem to have gained a strong foothold in local policies, there is a keen interest in universalism and maintaining public control over local ECEC provisi…

Why Finnish polytechnics reject top applicants

2019

I use a panel of higher education clearinghouse data to study the centralized assignment of applicants to Finnish polytechnics. Many top applicants remain completely unassigned each year. The same applicants' future applications reveal that many of them should have been admitted to a different program immediately. The application system, however, discourages applicants from applying to multiple programs within the same year, while at the same time leaving them in the dark on the set of programs willing to admit them. Improvements to the application system have the potential to substantially reduce reapplications, thereby shortening long queues into Finnish higher education. peerReviewed

Soveltuvuuskoe vai ei? : sosiaalialan ammattilaisten käsityksiä alansa korkeakouluopiskelijoiden ja työntekijöiden soveltuvuudesta alalle

2016

Tämän tutkimuksen tarkoituksena on selvittää sosiaalialan ammattilaisten käsityksiä alansa korkeakoulujen opiskelijavalinnasta sekä soveltuvuuskokeen tarpeesta osana opiskelijavalintoja. Tarkoituksena on myös tutkia sitä, miten opiskelijoiden ja työntekijöiden soveltumattomuus tai hyvä soveltuvuus alalle näyttäytyy koulutuksen aikana ja myöhemmin työelämässä. Sosiaalialan korkeakouluilla tarkoitetaan tässä tutkimuksessa ammattikorkeakoulujen sosionomikoulutusta sekä yliopistojen sosiaalityön koulutusta, joista ensin mainitussa opiskelijoiden soveltuvuuden testaamisella on ollut pitkään vakiintunut asema. Tarkoituksena on tuottaa uutta tietoa aiheesta, jota varsinkin Suomessa on tutkittu väh…

Advantage of rare infanticide strategies in an invasion experiment of behavioural polymorphism

2012

Killing conspecific infants (infanticide) is among the most puzzling phenomena in nature. Stable polymorphism in such behaviour could be maintained by negative frequency-dependent selection (benefit of rare types). However, it is currently unknown whether there is genetic polymorphism in infanticidal behaviour or whether infanticide may have any fitness advantages when rare. Here we show genetic polymorphism in non-parental infanticide. Our novel invasion experiment confirms negative frequency-dependent selection in wild bank vole populations, where resource benefits allow an infanticidal strategy to invade a population of non-infanticidal individuals. The results show that infanticidal beh…

Spatiotemporal and gender-specific parasitism in two species of gobiid fish

2018

Parasitism is considered a major selective force in natural host populations. Infections can decrease host condition and vigour, and potentially influence, for example, host population dynamics and behavior such as mate choice. We studied parasite infections of two common marine fish species, the sand goby (Pomatoschistus minutus) and the common goby (Pomatoschistus microps), in the brackish water Northern Baltic Sea. We were particularly interested in the occurrence of parasite taxa located in central sensory organs, such as eyes, potentially affecting fish behavior and mate choice. We found that both fish species harbored parasite communities dominated by taxa transmitted to fish through …

Yrjö Blomstedtin ja Victor Sucksdorffin Kainuu

2016

Stabilising selection on immune response in male black grouse Lyrurus tetrix

2017

Illnesses caused by a variety of micro- and macro- organisms can negatively affect individuals’ fitness, leading to the expectation that immunity is under positive selection. However, immune responses are costly and individuals must trade-off their immune response with other fitness components (e.g. survival or reproductive success) meaning that individuals with intermediate response may have the greatest overall fitness. Such a process might be particularly acute in species with strong sexual selection because the condition-dependence of male secondary sexual-traits might lead to striking phenotypic differences amongst males of different immune response levels. We tested whether there is s…