A Workshop in Ecology and Behaviour seminar hosted by the School of Biological Sciences
Abstract: Competition for limiting resources can select for aggression in both males and females. For males, the benefits of aggression in terms of acquiring food, breeding sites and mates are generally well understood, but much less is known about the benefits and costs of aggression in females. In this talk, I begin by exploring the role of physiological trade-offs and ecological interactions in regulating female aggression, presenting data from lab and field studies of cichlids. I then move to consider variation in aggression across species, drawing on results of recent comparative analyses of vertebrates to show how environmental variation can shape the evolution of aggression in a sex-specific manner.