Eco-ethology of sexual strategies in animals.

This brief review of comparative aspects of sexual strategies in animals, will focus on their behavioral flexibility rather than on fixed action patterns. Discussion will be on why sex is so common, but not universal, in animal species, and why males and females differ in their sexual strategies, and how each individual adapts its strategies according to social and ecological environment. The goal is to suggest to clinical sexologists to be careful in depicting what is pathological and what is an adaptation to a bad ecological or social environment in our species.

When to get mad: adaptive significance of rage in animals.

The wide distribution of rage in animals suggests that rage should have an adaptive significance. In the present work, the function of rage is explored under an evolutionary perspective. I try to assess the selective advantage conferred to the individual presenting rage compared to one that does not. In this work, I considered animals under the 'strategist' perspective rather than the 'stimulus-reactor' one. I suggest that rage has a highly adaptive significance both as: (1) an emotion to prepare antagonistic actions and (2) as a communicative act. I suggest therefore that, as a communicative act, rage can be explored through the theory of games. In three crucial scenarios, I investigate, using the theory of games framework, when, and how, there is a selective advantage for individuals expressing, bluffing and simulating rage.

Banded karyotypes of 20 Papionini species reveal no necessary correlation with speciation.

The G-banded karyotypes of 20 species of the tribe Papionini are remarkably similar, and the amount of phylogenetic interpretation permitted is limited. The genera Mandrillus and Cercocebus may be linked by a derived chromosome 10. T. gelada may be linked to the macaques by chromosome 2. Chromosome 5, which differs in M. fascicularis, makes this species an unlikely ancestor of the Sulawesi (Celebes) macaques. An alternate hypothesis, which takes into consideration the possibility that ancestral populations may be polymorphic for these chromosome variants, suggests that different chromosome variants have become fixed in different lines. These chromosomes would therefore not reflect phylogenetic relations. In the Papionini the karyotype has not played a major role in diversification and speciation.