Cryptic female choice in response to male pheromones in Drosophila melanogaster.

Females control the paternity of their offspring by selectively mating with males they perceive to be of high quality. In species where females mate with multiple males in succession, females may bias offspring paternity by favoring the sperm of one male over another, a process known as cryptic female choice. While evidence of cryptic female choice exists in multiple taxa, the mechanisms underlying this process have remained difficult to unravel.

Histone acetyltransferases and external demands influence task switching in ants.

In social hymenopterans, workers specialize in different tasks. Whether a worker nurses the brood or forages is influenced by the responsiveness for task-related cues which in turn is determined by gene expression. Task choice is dynamic and changes throughout a worker's life, e.

Mating increases Drosophila melanogaster females' choosiness by reducing olfactory sensitivity to a male pheromone.

Females that are highly selective when choosing a mate run the risk of remaining unmated or delaying commencing reproduction. Therefore, low female choosiness would be beneficial when males are rare but it would be maladaptive if males become more frequent. How can females resolve this issue? Polyandry would allow mating-status-dependent choosiness, with virgin females selecting their first mate with little selectivity and becoming choosier thereafter.

Gene expression is more strongly associated with behavioural specialization than with age or fertility in ant workers.

The ecological success of social insects is based on division of labour, not only between queens and workers, but also among workers. Whether a worker tends the brood or forages is influenced by age, fertility and nutritional status, with brood carers being younger, more fecund and more corpulent. Here, we experimentally disentangle behavioural specialization from age and fertility in Temnothorax longispinosus ant workers and analyse how these parameters are linked to whole-body gene expression.

Vitellogenin-like A-associated shifts in social cue responsiveness regulate behavioral task specialization in an ant.

Division of labor and task specialization explain the success of human and insect societies. Social insect colonies are characterized by division of labor, with workers specializing in brood care early and foraging later in life. Theory posits that this task switching requires shifts in responsiveness to task-related cues, yet experimental evidence is weak.

PO-CALC: a novel tool to correct common inconsistencies in the measurement of phenoloxidase activity.

A broad range of physiological and evolutionarily studies requires standard and robust methods to assess the strength and activity of an individual's immune defense. In insects, this goal is generally reached by spectrophotometrically measuring (pro-) phenoloxidase activity, an enzymatic and non-specific process activated after wounding and parasite infections. However, the literature surprisingly lacks a standard method to calculate these values from spectrophotometer data and thus to be able to compare results across studies.

Olfactory kin recognition in a songbird.

The ability to recognize close relatives in order to cooperate or to avoid inbreeding is widespread across all taxa. One accepted mechanism for kin recognition in birds is associative learning of visual or acoustic cues. However, how could individuals ever learn to recognize unfamiliar kin? Here, we provide the first evidence for a novel mechanism of kin recognition in birds.