680 research outputs found

    In the name of status:Adolescent harmful social behavior as strategic self-regulation

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    Adolescent harmful social behavior is behavior that benefits the person that exhibits it but could harm (the interest of) another. The traditional perspective on adolescent harmful social behavior is that it is what happens when something goes wrong in the developmental process, classifying such behaviors as a self-regulation failure. Yet, theories drawing from evolution theory underscore the adaptiveness of harmful social behavior and argue that such behavior is enacted as a means to gain important resources for survival and reproduction; gaining a position of power This dissertation aims to examine whether adolescent harmful social behavior can indeed be strategic self-regulation, and formulated two questions: Can adolescent harmful social behavior be seen as strategic attempts to obtain social status? And how can we incorporate this status-pursuit perspective more into current interventions that aim to reduce harmful social behavior? To answer these questions, I conducted a meta-review, a meta-analysis, two experimental studies, and an individual participant data meta-analysis (IPDMA). Meta-review findings of this dissertation underscore that when engaging in particular behavior leads to the acquisition of important peer-status-related goals, harmful social behavior may also develop from adequate self-regulation. Empirical findings indicate that the prospect of status affordances can motivate adolescents to engage in harmful social behavior and that descriptive and injunctive peer norms can convey such status prospects effectively. IPDMA findings illustrate that we can reach more adolescent cooperation and collectivism than we are currently promoting via interventions. In this dissertation, I argue we can do this in two ways. One, teach adolescents how they can achieve status by behaving prosocially. And two, change peer norms that reward harmful social behavior with popularity

    Unravelling the complex reproductive tactics of male humpback whales : an integrative analysis of paternity, age, testosterone, and genetic diversity

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    How the underlying forces of sexual selection impact reproductive tactics including elaborate acoustic displays in cetaceans remains poorly understood. Here, I combined 26 years (1995-2020) of photo-identification, behavioural, (epi)genetic, and endocrine data from an endangered population of humpback whales (New Caledonia), to explore male reproductive success, age, physiology, and population dynamics over almost a third of the lifespan of a humpback whale. First, I conducted a paternity analysis on 177 known mother-offspring pairs and confirmed previous findings of low variation in reproductive success in male humpback whales. Second, epigenetic age estimates of 485 males revealed a left-skewed population age structure in the first half of the study period that became more balanced in the second half. Further, older males (> 23 years) more often engaged in certain reproductive tactics (singing and escorting) and were more successful in siring offspring once the population age structure stabilised, suggesting reproductive tactics and reproductive success in male humpback whales may be age-dependent. Third, using enzyme immunoassays on 457 blubber samples, I observed a seasonal decline in male testosterone in the population over the breeding season. Testosterone levels appeared highest during puberty, then decreased and levelled off at the onset of maturity, yet were highly variable at any point during the breeding season and across males of all ages. Lastly, I investigated the influence of genetic diversity at the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) class I and class IIa (DQB and DRB-a) on patterns of male reproductive success in humpback whales. Mating pairs shared fewer alleles than expected under random mating at MHC class I and IIa, thus, providing evidence of an MHC-mediated female mate choice in humpback whales. This thesis provides novel, critical insights into the evolutionary consequences of commercial whaling on the demography, patterns of reproduction and sexual selection of exploited populations of baleen whales."This work was supported by a University of St Andrews School of Biology Ph.D. Scholarship and the Louis M. Herman Research Scholarship 2022 to Franca Eichenberger. Sample collection and analyses from 2018-2020 were supported by grants to Ellen C. Garland (Royal Society University Research Fellowship (UF160081 & URF\R\221020), Royal Society Research Fellows Enhancement Award (RGF\EA\180213), Royal Society Research Grants for Research Fellows 2018 (RGF\R1\181014), National Geographic Grant (#NGS-50654R-18), Carnegie Trust Research Incentive Grant (RIG007772), British Ecological Society Small Research Grant (SR18/1288) and School of Biology Research Committee funding)."--Fundin

    AI: Limits and Prospects of Artificial Intelligence

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    The emergence of artificial intelligence has triggered enthusiasm and promise of boundless opportunities as much as uncertainty about its limits. The contributions to this volume explore the limits of AI, describe the necessary conditions for its functionality, reveal its attendant technical and social problems, and present some existing and potential solutions. At the same time, the contributors highlight the societal and attending economic hopes and fears, utopias and dystopias that are associated with the current and future development of artificial intelligence

    2023 GREAT Day Program

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    SUNY Geneseo’s Seventeenth Annual GREAT Day. Geneseo Recognizing Excellence, Achievement & Talent Day is a college-wide symposium celebrating the creative and scholarly endeavors of our students. http://www.geneseo.edu/great_dayhttps://knightscholar.geneseo.edu/program-2007/1017/thumbnail.jp

    Intrasexual aggression reduces mating success in field crickets

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    This work was supported by the UK Natural Environment Research Council (NE/L011255/1 and NE/T000619/1).Aggressive behaviour is thought to have significant consequences for fitness, sexual selection and the evolution of social interactions, but studies measuring its expression across successive encounters?both intra- and intersexual?are limited. We used the field cricket Teleogryllus oceanicus to evaluate factors affecting repeatability of male aggression and its association with mating success. We quantified focal male aggression expressed towards partners and received from partners in three successive, paired trials, each involving a different male partner. We then measured a proxy of focal male fitness in mating trials with females. The likelihood and extent of aggressive behaviour varied across trials, but repeatability was negligible, and we found no evidence that patterns of focal aggression resulted from interacting partner identity or prior experience. Males who consistently experienced aggression in previous trials showed decreased male mating ?efficiency??determined by the number of females a male encountered before successfully mating, but the effect was weak and we found no other evidence that intrasexual aggression was associated with later mating success. During mating trials, however, we observed unexpected male aggression towards females, and this was associated with markedly decreased male mating efficiency and success. Our findings suggest that nonadaptive aggressive spillover in intersexual mating contexts could be an important but underappreciated factor influencing the evolution of intrasexual aggression.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe

    Airborne Sound and Substrate-borne Vibration in Orthopteran Communication

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    The challenge of attracting and locating potential mates has driven the evolution of diverse mate-finding signaling systems. These systems can be complex, with multiple signals or signal components spread across different sensory modalities. When multiple modalities are combined in one communication system, features of each can be important to individual fitness; over evolutionary time, these can shape investment in different parts of a signal repertoire. One group of animals that commonly uses multiple signal modalities is Orthoptera. Cricket and katydid species within this order often produce airborne sound calls to advertise to potential mates. Many also produce substrate-borne vibrational signals. I describe three investigations into the patterns of sound and vibration use by orthopteran insects with a combination of long focal recordings of individual callers and playback experiments to receivers. In the first chapter, I quantify the total diel sound and vibrational calling activity of ten species of katydid (Tettigoniidae: Pseudophyllinae) to investigate whether these signal types trade off with each other. I find that species that use more vibration tend to use less sound, and that other traits like sound call bandwidth may mediate this relationship. In the second chapter, I investigate intraspecific variation in one of these species (Docidocercus gigliotosi), recording the calling activity of recently mated vs. unmated males over several weeks. I find evidence for positive within-individual, but not among-individual, correlations between sound and vibrational signaling, with mating having large initial effects and more subtle, lingering ones on signal production. In the third chapter, I assess how duetting female crickets (Lebinthus bitaeniatus, Gryllidae: Eneopterinae) respond to different components of male calls, finding that callers strike a balance between calling signal attractiveness and efficacy in duet timing. Increasing the length of a typically stereotyped sound call component results in vibrational replies that are higher amplitude and likely more perceptible—yet incorrectly timed. Together, these projects reveal patterns of differential investment in multiple signal modalities in orthopteran insects. Quantifying these differences is key to understanding how complex signaling systems function and how they might affect responses to environmental change

    2014 GREAT Day Program

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    SUNY Geneseo’s Eighth Annual GREAT Day.https://knightscholar.geneseo.edu/program-2007/1008/thumbnail.jp

    Causes and consequences of same-sex sociosexual behaviour in male rhesus macaques

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    Numerous reports have documented the occurrence of same-sex sociosexual behaviour (SSB) across the natural world. However, distributions of the behaviour within a species are needed to test popular theories describing its evolutionary underpinning, above all, whether the behaviour can be heritable and therefore evolve, and consequently if the behaviour carries fitness costs due to harsh trade-offs with reproductive effort. Chapter 1 provides this intraspecific distribution by using detailed observations collected across three years of the social and mounting behaviour of 236 male semi-wild male rhesus macaques. Results showed that male-male mounting was more common than male-female mounting, and that the likelihood of exclusive SSB orientations (and duly high reproductive costs) were low. Chapter 2 demonstrates that historical theories of social group sex-ratio and dominance (potentially mediating limited-female access) explain SSB only marginally, with increasing age instead weakly influencing both increased dominance rank and decreased SSB. Results therefore opened the possibility of individual identity, and consequently genetic background, influencing the expression of the behaviour. Using a comprehensive pedigree, this chapter provides the first evidence of vertebrate repeatability (19.3%) and heritability (6.4%) of SSB in the natural world. Furthermore, a positive genetic correlation between same-sex mounter and mountee activities indicated a common underpinning to different forms of SSB. In contrast, there was no genetic correlation between male-male and male-female mounting, providing further evidence of a decoupling between SSB and costs to missed mating opportunities. Chapter 3 studies pedigree offspring sired to directly show no evidence of a cost to SSB, but instead that the behaviour predicted coalitionary partnerships associated with likely fitness benefits. Together, the results presented here demonstrate that SSB can be common amongst individuals, can evolve, and is unlikely to be costly, with implications for both animal and human research.Open Acces
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