Male sexually coercive behaviour drives increased swimming efficiency in female guppies

Sexual coercion of females by males is widespread across sexually reproducing species. It stems from a conflict of interest over reproduction and exerts selective pressure on both sexes. For females, there is often a significant energetic cost of exposure to male sexually coercive behaviours. Our understanding of the efficiency of female resistance to male sexually coercive behaviour is key to understanding how sexual conflict contributes to population level dynamics and ultimately to the evolution of sexually antagonistic traits. Overlooked within this context are plastic physiological responses of traits within the lifetime of females that could moderate the energetic cost imposed by coercive males. Here, we examined whether conflict over the frequency and timing of mating between male and female guppies Poecilia reticulata can induce changes in swimming performance and aerobic capacity in females as they work to escape harassment by males. Females exposed to higher levels of harassment over a 5-month period used less oxygen to swim at a given speed, but displayed no difference in resting metabolic rate, maximal metabolic rate, maximal sustained swimming speed or aerobic scope compared to females receiving lower levels of harassment. The observed increase in swimming efficiency is at least partially related to differences in swimming mechanics, likely brought on by a training effect of increased activity, as highly harassed females spent less time performing pectoral fin-assisted swimming. Sexual conflict results in sexually antagonistic traits that impose a variety of costs, but our results show that females can reduce costs through phenotypic plasticity. It is also possible that phenotypic plasticity in swimming physiology or mechanics in response to sexual coercion can potentially give females more control over matings and affect which male traits are under selection

Divergence in social traits in Trinidadian guppies selectively bred for high and low leadership in a cooperative context

This is the final version. Available on open access from Nature Research via the DOI in this recordIn many animal species, individuals with certain morphological, physiological, or behavioural traits may have a disproportionately large role in determining group behaviour. While most empirical studies of leadership have focused on behaviour of individuals exploring new environments or foraging, little is known about leading behaviour in other ecological contexts. Here, we use a selective breeding design in the Trinidadian guppy (Poecilia reticulata) to quantify the heritability of leadership in a cooperative context, and determine the behavioural traits associated with it. Firstly we found that phenotypic selection for high and low leadership (HL and LL, respectively) over three filial generations resulted in pronounced differences in leadership tendency with a moderate degree of heritability. In our assay of other social traits, LL males were more aggressive and sampled their social environment less than HL males, but HL and LL females did not differ in either aggressiveness or sociability. Traits such as boldness and exploratory tendency did not diverge between the two lines. Leading behaviour was thus associated with social traits in males, but not females; suggesting that there may be sex-specific mechanisms driving the emergence of leadership in this context. We discuss our findings in the context of the evolution of cooperation.Danish Research Counci

Male phenotypic diversity experienced during ontogeny mediates female mate choice in guppies

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Oxford University Press via the DOI in this record.Early social experience can be important in shaping female mate choice. Previous work has shown that females adjust their decisions based on the distribution of male sexual trait values encountered during development. However, other phenotypic features could be important in the formation of mate preferences if, for example, they provide additional information about the males available. Here, we examined how the level of overall phenotypic variance (independent of trait values) experienced during ontogeny, mediated female choice in guppies, Poecilia reticulata. Developing females were reared with males either all different in colouration or all similar in colouration or with adult females representing high variance, low variance and no experience of male variance respectively. We found that females were more sexually responsive when reared with females only than in either of the male treatments. When reared with males, responsiveness was greater in the low-variance compared to the high variance treatment. Moreover, females had stronger sexual preferences following rearing in the high variance compared to the low variance condition. In turn, males switched mating tactics, increasing the rate of coerced copulation attempts when facing choosier females, possibly to balance the loss in mating opportunities. Taken together, these results demonstrate the adaptive plasticity of female mating decisions and the dynamic selection pressures they might impose on the evolution of male sexual traits, potentially contributing to the maintenance of the extreme polymorphism found in male colour patterns.This work was supported by the University of Exeter through an Exeter Graduate Fellow studentship

School Belonging in Different Cultures: The Effects of Individualism and Power Distance

Limited evidence exists on how the larger cultural framework affects psychological processes related to schooling. We investigated how the cultural dimensions of indi- vidualism/collectivism and power distance in uence the sense of school belongingness using 2003 Programme for International Student Assessment survey data on 15-year-old students from 31 countries. Hierarchical linear modeling analysis indicated that power distance (i.e., hierarchical nature of social relationships) is a better predictor of school belongingness on the cultural level than individualism/collectivism. Accordingly, students living in cultures with high degree of power distance (particularly East Asian countries in these data sets) report lower school belongingness than students living in cultures with more lateral power relationships (Western countries). Positive teacher student relations and preference for cooperative learning environment predict higher school belonging- ness across cultures.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/147229/1/Cortina, Arel, Smith-Darden 2017.pdfDescription of Cortina, Arel, Smith-Darden 2017.pdf : main articl

Male sexually coercive behaviour drives increased swimming efficiency in female guppies

Sexual coercion of females by males is widespread across sexually reproducing species. It stems from a conflict of interest over reproduction and exerts selective pressure on both sexes. For females, there is often a significant energetic cost to exposure to male sexually coercive behaviours. Our understanding of the efficiency of female resistance to male sexually coercive behaviour is key to understanding how sexual conflict contributes to population level dynamics and ultimately to the evolution of sexually antagonistic traits. Overlooked within this context are plastic physiological responses of traits within the lifetime of females that could moderate the energetic cost imposed by coercive males. Here we examined whether conflict over the frequency and timing of mating between male and female guppies Poecilia reticulata can induce changes in swimming performance and aerobic capacity in females as they work to escape harassment by males. Females exposed to higher levels of harassment over a five month period used less oxygen to swim at a given speed, but displayed no difference in resting metabolic rate, maximal metabolic rate, maximal sustained swimming speed or aerobic scope compared to females receiving lower levels of harassment. The observed increase in swimming efficiency is at least partially related to differences in swimming mechanics, likely brought on by a training effect of increased activity, as highly harassed females spent less time performing pectoral fin-assisted swimming. Sexual conflict results in sexually antagonistic traits that impose a variety of costs, but our results show that females can reduce costs through phenotypic plasticity. It is also possible that phenotypic plasticity in swimming physiology or mechanics in response to sexual coercion can potentially give females more control over matings and affect which male traits are under selection.NERCLeverhulme Early Career FellowshipLeverhulme TrustER

Kant's philosophy of the aesthetic and the philosophy of praxis

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2012 Association for Economic and Social Analysis.This essay seeks to reconstruct the terms for a more productive engagement with Kant than is typical within contemporary academic cultural Marxism, which sees him as the cornerstone of a bourgeois model of the aesthetic. The essay argues that, in the Critique of Judgment, the aesthetic stands in as a substitute for the missing realm of human praxis. This argument is developed in relation to Kant's concept of reflective judgment that is in turn related to a methodological shift toward inductive and analogical procedures that help Kant overcome the dualisms of the first two Critiques. This reassessment of Kant's aesthetic is further clarified by comparing it with and offering a critique of Terry Eagleton's assessment of the Kantian aesthetic as synonymous with ideology

Trinidadian guppies use a social heuristic that can support cooperation among non-kin

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from the Royal Society via the DOI in this recordThe dataset associated with this article is available in ORE at: http://hdl.handle.net/10871/18463Cooperation among non-kin is well documented in humans and widespread in non-human animals, but explaining the occurrence of cooperation in the absence of inclusive fitness benefits has proven a significant challenge. Current theoretical explanations converge on a single point: co-operators can prevail when they cluster in social space. However, we know very little about the real-world mechanisms that drive such clustering, particularly in systems where cognitive limitations make it unlikely that mechanisms such as score keeping and reputation are at play. Here we show that Trinidadian guppies (Poecilia reticulata) use a ‘Walk Away’ strategy, a simple social heuristic by which assortment by cooperativeness can come about among mobile agents. Guppies cooperate during predator inspection and we found that when experiencing defection in this context, individuals prefer to move to a new social environment, despite having no prior information about this new social group. Our results provide evidence in non-human animals that individuals use a simple social partner updating strategy in response to defection, supporting theoretical work applying heuristics to understanding the proximate mechanisms underpinning the evolution of cooperation among non-kin.Leverhulme TrustDanish Research Council for Nature and UniverseCarlsberg Foundatio

In Search of Modifiable Risk and Protective Factors for Teen Dating Violence

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/137513/1/jora12280_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/137513/2/jora12280.pd

Potentiality in Biology

We take the potentialities that are studied in the biological sciences (e.g., totipotency) to be an important subtype of biological dispositions. The goal of this paper is twofold: first, we want to provide a detailed understanding of what biological dispositions are. We claim that two features are essential for dispositions in biology: the importance of the manifestation process and the diversity of conditions that need to be satisfied for the disposition to be manifest. Second, we demonstrate that the concept of a disposition (or potentiality) is a very useful tool for the analysis of the explanatory practice in the biological sciences. On the one hand it allows an in-depth analysis of the nature and diversity of the conditions under which biological systems display specific behaviors. On the other hand the concept of a disposition may serve a unificatory role in the philosophy of the natural sciences since it captures not only the explanatory practice of biology, but of all natural sciences. Towards the end we will briefly come back to the notion of a potentiality in biology