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Full-Text Articles in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Cognitive And Web Phenotypes Of The Western Black Widow Spider, Clint Michael Sergi
Cognitive And Web Phenotypes Of The Western Black Widow Spider, Clint Michael Sergi
Theses and Dissertations
Animals with brains create mental representations of their environment and their own position within it, and use these representations to make decisions. The information used to create mental representations, and how animals use representations to make decisions, are functions of an animal’s evolution and ecology. Mental representations can be as simple as remembering the direction and distance home, or as detailed as a human’s mental map of their own home. I used behavior assays designed to reveal the contents of mental representations to investigate how a web spider creates representation of its environment and objects within it, and uses these …
Architecture Of Mate Choice Decisions In Enchenopa Treehoppers, Bretta Speck
Architecture Of Mate Choice Decisions In Enchenopa Treehoppers, Bretta Speck
Theses and Dissertations
Mate selection is one of the most important choices a female can make for herself and her offspring. Variation in mate choice decisions has consequences for the maintenance of and the diversity within a population and the promotion of divergence between populations. Mate choice decisions arise from the interaction of two main components: “mate preferences” (the relative attractiveness of a potential mate) and “choosiness” (the effort put into procuring a preferred mate). My dissertation analyzes the relationship between the components involved in female mate choice decisions in Enchenopa binotata treehoppers. I take a three-pronged approach. First, I investigated how E. …