Publications by authors named "R Ben-Shlomo"

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.

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Article Synopsis
  • Multiple paternity is a common reproductive strategy observed in various species, providing males with clear advantages, while the benefits for females are more ambiguous and may include improved genetic diversity in offspring.
  • In a study of nutria, an invasive species where dominant males typically father most offspring, researchers found a significant occurrence of multiple paternity throughout gestation, with dominant males siring fetuses having higher testosterone levels than those from less common fathers.
  • This suggests that nutria females might be selecting for genetic diversity in their litters, potentially serving as a bet-hedging strategy to enhance reproductive success despite the risk of some sons having lower testosterone levels and, consequently, less potential reproductive success.
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When 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).

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Inbreeding 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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