In 1990, Manfred Milinski and Theo Bakker published a paper in Nature providing experimental evidence in support of the Hamilton-Zuk hypothesis. Milinski and Bakker showed, through experiments on three-spined stickleback, that: 1. the intensity of a male's red color is correlated with his physical...
Behaviour
Revisiting Clutton-Brock and Harvey 1977
In 1977, Tim Clutton-Brock and Paul Harvey published a paper in the Journal of Zoology reporting the results of their comparative analysis of the ecology and social organization of 100 primate species. This study was probably the first to statistically account for the non-independence of data as a...
Revisiting Davies 1978
In the summer of 1976, having just completed his PhD from Oxford and with some time to spare before his next job, Nick Davies decided to do a short study of speckled wood butterflies in Wytham Woods, where he was living at the time. Davies observed that male speckled woods seemed to defend...
Revisiting Perrins 1965
In 1965, Christopher Perrins published a paper in the Journal of Animal Ecology, reporting the results of his study on the population biology of the Great Tit in Wytham Woods, a site made famous by the work initiated by David Lack, Christopher Perrin's PhD supervisor. Fifty-one years after the...
Revisiting Seehausen et al. 1997
In 1997, Ole Seehausen, Jacques van Alphen and Frans Witte published a paper in Science providing evidence for a novel route through which eutrophication can reduce species diversity. Species of cichlid fish in Lake Victoria are capable of interbreeding, but mate choice based on coloration and...
Revisiting Hrdy 1974
In a paper published in Folia Primatologica in 1974, Sarah Blaffer Hrdy reported the findings of her field study on Hanuman Langurs in India that suggested that infant-killing by male langurs was a reproductive strategy. Forty-two years after the paper was published, I asked Sarah Hrdy about the...
Revisiting Le Boeuf 1974
In 1974, Burney Le Boeuf published a paper in American Zoologist that described his field behavioural studies on the role of competition in determining reproductive success of elephant seals on Año Nuevo Island, California. Forty-two years after the paper was published I asked Burney Le Boeuf...
Revisiting Krebs et al. 1977
In a paper published in Animal Behaviour in 1977, John Krebs, Jonathan Erichsen, Michael Webber and Eric Charnov showed experimentally that whether great tits (Parus major) are selective or not about prey choice depends only on the supply rate of the more profitable prey, and not of the less...
Revisiting Andersson 1982
In a paper published in Nature in 1982, Malte Andersson showed, experimentally, that female long-tailed widowbirds choose mates based on the lengths of their tails. Andersson’s study was, arguably, the first experimental support for Darwin’s Sexual Selection theory. Thirty-four years after the...
Revisiting Petrie et al. 1991
In a paper published in Animal Behaviour in 1991, Marion Petrie, Tim Halliday and Carolyn Sanders showed, through an observational study, that: 1. mating success of male peacock was related to the number of spots on their tails; 2. the relation between mating success and number of tail spots was a...