Efforts to understand the links between evolutionary and ecological dynamics hinge on our
ability to measure and understand how genes influence phenotypes, fitness and population …

Telomere length (TL) has become a biomarker of increasing interest within ecology and
evolutionary biology, and has been found to predict subsequent survival in some recent avian …

By determining access to limited resources, social dominance is often an important determinant
of fitness. Thus, if heritable, standard theory predicts mean dominance should evolve. …

Reproductive timing in many taxa plays a key role in determining breeding productivity 1 ,
and is often sensitive to climatic conditions 2 . Current climate change may alter the timing of …

Abstract Knowledge of the parentage of individuals is required to address a variety of
questions concerning the evolutionary dynamics of wild populations. A major advance in …

Dietary restriction (DR) under laboratory conditions generally extends life span and delays
ageing across species as diverse as yeast, nematode worms, flies and mice, and is …

Sexual selection acting on male traits through female mate choice is commonly inferred from
female association preferences in dichotomous mate choice experiments. However, there …

Parenting in the burying beetle Nicrophorus vespilloides is complex and, unusually, the sex
and number of parents that can be present is flexible. Such flexibility is expected to involve …

Background Understanding the fitness consequences of inbreeding is of major importance
for evolutionary and conservation biology. However, there are few studies using pedigree-…

Mating between relatives often results in negative fitness consequences or inbreeding
depression. However, the expression of inbreeding in populations of wild cooperative mammals …