1,991 research outputs found
Fighting for mates: the importance of individual size in mating contests in rocky shore littorinids
Studies of mating contests have reported how traits (e.g. body size) related to resource holding potential (RHP) and strategies to assess RHP and resource value influence contest outcome in many taxa but are rare in the Gastropoda. The influence of male size (as an index of RHP) and female size (as a measure of resource value) on contest outcome were investigated in two littorinid snails, Echinolittorina malaccana and E. radiata, in Hong Kong during May-June 2013. In these snails, contests between males take the form of a 'challenger' attempting to take over the copulation position occupied by a 'defender'. Both challengers and defenders were, generally, smaller than the females in both species. In both species, the larger the challenger relative to the defender, the more likely he would replace the defender in the copulation position. The challengers were, however, more successful in E. radiata, as they generally challenged defenders that were smaller than themselves, suggesting an ability to detect rival size before entering into a contest in this species. When sizes of the contestants were similar, defenders were more likely to win contests in E. malaccana but not in E. radiata. Evidence for pure self-assessment of RHP and the ability to assess resource value in challengers was found in E. malaccana. Different fighting strategies appear to have evolved in these congeneric marine snail species and decisions based on male and female sizes play an important role in determining male reproductive success
Sampling scale can cause bias in positive assortative mating estimates: The first evidence in two intertidal snails
Assortative mating in the wild is commonly estimated by correlating between traits in mating pairs (e.g. size of males and females). Unfortunately such an approach may suffer from considerable sampling bias when the distribution of different expressions of a trait in the wild is non-random; for example, when segregation of
different size classes of individuals occur in different microhabitats or areas.
Consequently, any observed trait correlation in the wild can be an artifact of pooling heterogeneous samples of mating pairs from different microhabitats or areas rather than true non-random matings. This bias in estimating trait correlations due to sampling scale is termed the scale-of-choice effect (SCE). Here we use two intertidal littorinid species from Hong Kong to show how the SCE can bias size-assortative mating estimates from mating pairs captured in the wild, empirically demonstrating the influence of this effect on measures of positive assortative mating. This finding cautions that studies that have overlooked SCE may have misinterpreted the magnitude and the cause of assortative mating, and we provide a new analytical approach to protect against this potential bias in future studies
The causal relationship between sexual selection and sexual size dimorphism in marine gastropods
Sexual size dimorphism is widespread among dioecious species, but its underlying driving forces are often complex. A review of sexual size dimorphism in marine gastropods revealed two common patterns: first, sexual size dimorphism, with females being larger than males, and, second, females being larger than males in mating pairs. Both patterns suggest sexual selection and sexual size dimorphism are causally related. To test this hypothesis, we investigated, first, mechanisms driving sexual selection on size in three congeneric marine gastropods with different degrees of sexual size dimorphism, and, second, the correlation between male/female sexual selection and sexual size dimorphism across several marine gastropod species. Male mate choice via mucus trail following (as evidence of sexual selection) was found during the mating process in all three congeneric species, even though not all species showed sexual size dimorphism. There was also a significant and strong negative correlation between female sexual selection and sexual size dimorphism across 16 cases from seven marine gastropod species. These results suggest that sexual selection does not drive sexual size dimorphism. There was, however, evidence of males utilizing a similar mechanism to choose mates (i.e. selecting a female slightly larger than their own size) which may be widespread among gastropods, and, in tandem with sexual size dimorphism varying between species, provides a plausible explanation of the mating patterns observed in marine gastropods
-Spectral theory of locally symmetric spaces with -rank one
We study the -spectrum of the Laplace-Beltrami operator on certain
complete locally symmetric spaces with finite volume and
arithmetic fundamental group whose universal covering is a
symmetric space of non-compact type. We also show, how the obtained results for
locally symmetric spaces can be generalized to manifolds with cusps of rank
one
Effective Functional Form of Regge Trajectories
We present theoretical arguments and strong phenomenological evidence that
hadronic Regge trajectories are essentially nonlinear and can be well
approximated, for phenomenological purposes, by a specific square-root form.Comment: 29 pages, LaTeX. Published versio
Continuity and Stability of Partial Entropic Sums
Extensions of Fannes' inequality with partial sums of the Tsallis entropy are
obtained for both the classical and quantum cases. The definition of kth
partial sum under the prescribed order of terms is given. Basic properties of
introduced entropic measures and some applications are discussed. The derived
estimates provide a complete characterization of the continuity and stability
properties in the refined scale. The results are also reformulated in terms of
Uhlmann's partial fidelities.Comment: 9 pages, no figures. Some explanatory and technical improvements are
made. The bibliography is extended. Detected errors and typos are correcte
On the lowest eigenvalue of Laplace operators with mixed boundary conditions
In this paper we consider a Robin-type Laplace operator on bounded domains.
We study the dependence of its lowest eigenvalue on the boundary conditions and
its asymptotic behavior in shrinking and expanding domains. For convex domains
we establish two-sided estimates on the lowest eigenvalues in terms of the
inradius and of the boundary conditions
Solitons in nonlocal nonlinear media: exact results
We investigate the propagation of one-dimensional bright and dark spatial
solitons in a nonlocal Kerr-like media, in which the nonlocality is of general
form. We find an exact analytical solution to the nonlinear propagation
equation in the case of weak nonlocality. We study the properties of these
solitons and show their stability.Comment: 9 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Double transverse spin asymmetries in vector boson production
We investigate a helicity non-flip double transverse spin asymmetry in vector
boson production in hadron-hadron scattering, which was first considered by
Ralston and Soper at the tree level. It does not involve transversity functions
and in principle also arises in W-boson production for which we present the
expressions. The asymmetry requires observing the transverse momentum of the
vector boson, but it is not suppressed by explicit inverse powers of a large
energy scale. However, as we will show, inclusion of Sudakov factors causes
suppression of the asymmetry, which increases with energy. Moreover, the
asymmetry is shown to be approximately proportional to x_1 g_1(x_1) x_2 \bar
g_1(x_2), which gives rise to additional suppression at small values of the
light cone momentum fractions. This implies that it is negligible for Z or W
production and is mainly of interest for \gamma^* at low energies. We also
compare the asymmetry with other types of double transverse spin asymmetries
and discuss how to disentangle them.Comment: 12 pages, Revtex, 2 Postscript figures, uses aps.sty, epsf.sty;
figures replaced, a few minor other correction
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