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

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 behaviour is highly heritable with genetic correlation across the sexes. Thus, a positive correlative response in male behaviour is expected when selection operates on females only and vice versa. Our results, on one hand, demonstrate potential benefits of infanticide, and on the other, they open a new perspective of correlative evolution of infanticide in females and males

Female Fertility Affects Men's Linguistic Choices

We examined the influence of female fertility on the likelihood of male participants aligning their choice of syntactic construction with those of female confederates. Men interacted with women throughout their menstrual cycle. On critical trials during the interaction, the confederate described a picture to the participant using particular syntactic constructions. Immediately thereafter, the participant described to the confederate a picture that could be described using either the same construction that was used by the confederate or an alternative form of the construction. Our data show that the likelihood of men choosing the same syntactic structure as the women was inversely related to the women's level of fertility: higher levels of fertility were associated with lower levels of linguistic matching. A follow-up study revealed that female participants do not show this same change in linguistic behavior as a function of changes in their conversation partner's fertility. We interpret these findings in the context of recent data suggesting that non-conforming behavior may be a means of men displaying their fitness as a mate to women

Critical discourse studies: Where to from here?

This paper surveys critical discourse studies to the present and claims that, to avoid lapsing into comfortable orthodoxy in its mature phase, CDS needs to reassert its transformative radical teleology. The initial part of the paper reasserts the need for a strong social theory given the materialist and context-bound nature of discourse in daily activity. From this basis, the paper then characterizes the “new times” in which contemporary discourse occurs, and briefly surveys those issues typically analyzed, namely political economy, race and gender, and critical literacy. By considering people's ordinary lives, the paper then suggests that subject and agency, and calculative technologies of management deserve, and new modalities need, more research. Transdisciplinarity is encouraged, particularly with social psychology and critical management studies

A Longitudinal Analysis of Vocabulary Changes in Social Media

This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Springer Nature via the DOI in this recordThe vocabulary size of a language indicates the evolution of the language. The way people use their vocabulary in social media has changed, especially with the appearance of pictorial representations of ideas (e.g., emojis, memes). The adoption of emojis in the last few years motivated us to look into possible effects on vocabulary sizes in social media and maybe understand a little more about language evolution. In this paper, we do a longitudinal analysis of the vocabulary size used in social media for 14 different cities in the USA for a period of 2010–2015. We are especially interested in the relationship between vocabulary and education attainment. We computed the size of the vocabulary for each of the cities over time and compared that to the emoji usage for the same period. We found that emoji usage increases with time. Interestingly, the average size of the vocabulary behaves erratically with increases in the first two years, then reductions from 2012–2014, and then increases again in 2015. We investigated two factors that could be related to such pattern in vocabulary usage: (i) increase of reliance on emojis instead of words, which is negatively correlated with the growth of the vocabulary; (ii) increase the educational attainment, which shows a positive correlation with the increase of vocabulary for a specific time and place.Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research (MoHESR, Iraq)Northern Technical UniversityUniversity of Mosu

Experts' Views on Translation Across Multiple External Representations in Acquiring Biological Knowledge About Ecology, Genetics, and Evolution

This new publication in the Models and Modeling in Science Education series synthesizes a wealth of international research on using multiple representations in biology education and aims for a coherent framework in using them to improve higher-order learning. Addressing a major gap in the literature, the volume proposes a theoretical model for advancing biology educators' notions of how multiple external representations (MERs) such as analogies, metaphors and visualizations can best be harnessed for improving teaching and learning in biology at all pedagogical levels. The content tackles the conceptual and linguistic difficulties of learning biology at each level-macro, micro, sub-micro, and symbolic, illustrating how MERs can be used in teaching across these levels and in various combinations, as well as in differing contexts and topic areas. The strategies outlined will help students' reasoning and problem-solving skills, enhance their ability to construct mental models and internal representations, and, ultimately, will assist in increasing public understanding of biology-related issues, a key goal in today's world of pressing concerns over societal problems about food, environment, energy, and health. The book concludes by highlighting important aspects of research in biological education in the post-genomic, information age