Studies of female mate choice commonly use virgin females as test subjects, either to control
for the effects of mating or because virgin females are presumed to be more responsive to …

Research on mate choice has primarily focused on preferences for quality indicators,
assuming that all individuals show consensus about who is the most attractive. However, in …

Animals are usually expected to avoid mating with relatives (kin avoidance) as incestuous
mating can lead to the expression of inbreeding depression. Yet, theoretical models predict …

In many species that form socially monogamous pair bonds, a considerable proportion of the
offspring is sired by extrapair males. This observation has remained a puzzle for …

Animal vocalizations play an important role in individual recognition, kin recognition, species
recognition, and sexual selection. Despite much work in these fields done on birds virtually …

An underexploited approach to study condition dependence of sexually selected ornaments
is to use inbreeding to manipulate individual genetic quality. Because of differences in …

Animal self-cognizance might be of importance in different contexts like territoriality, self-
referent mate-choice or kin recognition. We investigated whether the cichlid fish …

The ability to differentiate between kin and nonkin is of importance in nepotistic as well as in
mate choice contexts. Phenotype matching is a significant kin recognition mechanism, which …

Social relationships can have important fitness consequences, and how well an individual is
socially connected often correlates with other behavioral traits. Whether such correlations …

Numerous studies have observed kin-biased social associations in a variety of species.
Many of these studies have focused on species exhibiting parental care, which may facilitate …