Intrasexual polymorphisms have evolved in a wide range of organisms. Most of them have been interpreted as the product of conditional strategies in which the tactic an individual adopts is determined by some aspect of state (e.g., age, size, condition). However, there are a few examples that...

Masquerading organisms appear to closely resemble inedible and generally inanimate objects, such as twigs, leaves, stones, and bird droppings. It has recently been demonstrated that masquerading prey gain protection from predation by being misclassified as inedible objects by their predators....

The antipredator benefits of grouping are relatively well understood; however, predation risk often differs for individuals that occupy different positions within a group. The selfish herd hypothesis describes how individuals can reduce risk of predation by moving to specific positions within the...

Antipredatory vigilance usually decreases in groups. The generally accepted "collective detection" explanation implies that because there are more eyes to scan the surroundings for predators, individuals in a group can lower their personal investment in vigilance without increasing their...

Antipredatory benefits are generally considered important in the evolution and maintenance of animal aggregations. One such benefit is the confusion effect: the reduced ease of prey capture experienced by some predators resulting from an inability to single out and attack an individual prey from...

How insect defense chemicals have evolved has remained relatively understudied, compared with the evolution of aposematic signals of such defenses. Because there is mounting evidence that chemical defenses can generally be expected to be costly, understanding the evolution of such defenses and...

Nestling brood parasites vary in the harm that they do to their companions in the nest. Here we use a game-theoretical model to attempt to account for this variation. Our model considers hosts that might routinely abandon single nestlings, regardless of whether they are host young or brood...