St Andrews Research Repository

Over the past twenty years there has been an exponential increase in the investigation of maternal effects. Understanding the adaptive function of maternal allocation strategies is integral to interpreting the evolutionary ...

The aim of this study was to obtain an understanding of the basis to female mating decisions in the Chinese rose bitterling (Rhodeus ocellatus). Bitterling have a resource-based mating system that involves the female laying ...

Selection operates when the variability among individuals in heritable traits translates to differences in the number of offspring that survive to breed, which is a close estimate of fitness. Consequently, the outcome of ...

Sexual selection arises via competition for access to mates, and is thus intimately tied to the social environment. For example, individual mating success may depend strongly on how many rivals or mating partners are ...

Reproductive interference occurs when individuals direct sexual behaviours towards other species and this causes a reduction in the fitness of one or both of the participants. While initially considered to be little more ...

Sexual interactions play an important role in generating sexual selection and antagonistic co-evolution. These forces can shape differences between the sexes, but also have the potential to generate population divergence ...

What processes contribute to the evolution of reproductive isolation and the coexistence of interfertile species in the same habitat? This thesis investigates the relative roles of species interactions and intraspecific ...