Males of the mountain gazelle deposit dung middens (different colors and shapes represent middens of different haplotypes) in preferable forest plots and countermark the same middens (two color circles) at the boundaries of their territories.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWhen it comes to aging, some colonial invertebrates present disparate patterns from the customary aging phenomenon in unitary organisms, where a single senescence phenomenon along ontogeny culminates in their inevitable deaths. Here we studied aging processes in 81 colonies of the marine urochordate Botryllus schlosseri each followed from birth to death (over 720 days). The colonies were divided between three life history strategies, each distinct from the others based on the presence/absence of colonial fission: NF (no fission), FA (fission develops after the colony reaches maximal size), and FB (fission develops before the colony reaches maximal size).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFInbreeding is generally avoided in animals due to the risk of inbreeding depression following an increase in homozygous deleterious alleles and loss of heterozygosity. Species that regularly inbreed challenge our understanding of the fitness effects of these risks. We investigated the fitness consequences of extended inbreeding in the haplodiploid date stone beetle, Coccotrypes dactyliperda.
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