Ejaculate Investment in a Promiscuous Rodent, \u3cem\u3ePeromyscus maniculatus\u3c/em\u3e: Effects of Population Density and Social Role

Questions: How does average male investment in ejaculates vary with changing population density (and thus with the risk of sperm competition) in a promiscuous species? Do individual male investment strategies vary with population density? Data studied: Total testicular mass, somatic mass and annual population density for wild-caught male deer mice, Peromyscus maniculatus, collected by snap-trapping over a 23-year period in Algonquin Provincial Park, Ontario, Canada. Search methods: We analysed the relation between mean testicular mass and mouse population densities across years. To investigate individual investment patterns, we compared the relation between total testicular mass and somatic mass among males for years differing in population density. Conclusions: Average investment in the testes was positively correlated with annual population density. An individual’s investment in testes depended on both the abundance of rival males and on relative body size, a trait associated with social rank

The financial crisis has exposed the shortcomings of America’s ‘debt safety net’

While debt has been an acceptable component of economic life for many decades, the bubble of the early 2000s and the subsequent financial crash took debt burdens to entirely new levels. Johnna Montgomerie argues that the contemporary model that social protection will come from asset-based welfare and easy credit has led to massive financial insecurity, especially for the young and old, who have found rising debts to have far outpaced their incomes. Already high debt levels for young people and senior citizens mean that any falls in income through unemployment or rising healthcare costs will leave them to face debt repayments of 25 to 49 percent of their income

The UK’s debt economy creates new forms of inequality

How does debt relate to deepening income and wealth inequality? The most recent research by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development shows clearly the multiple ways in which growing inequality is inhibiting economic renewal. Johnna Montgomerie considers how the current unprecedented scale and scope of indebtedness reconfigures the established relationships between labour markets, income and wealth dynamics