clhs sciblog

Omar Tonsi Eldakar of the University of Arizona’s Arizona Research Laboratories conducted a study of what type of male that female water striders mate with. The experiment showed that the female water striders mated more with subtle males rather than the sexually aggressive males.

This new finding is exactly the opposite of what Eldakar from Binghamton University in N.Y. said. John W. Pepper said, “If the early laboratory studies were a realistic representation of nature, nature should be overrun by hyper-aggressive males – and it’s not. So something was wrong with that idea, and now we know what.” As the researchers realized that the situation was not a realistic one they changed the whole experiment. They saw that female water striders were being sexually harassed by the more aggressive males. In a natural habitat females would move to the less aggressive males to mate. As Eldakar said “Nice guys don’t always finish last,” he said. “In this study we’ve shown that it’s possible for non-aggressive males to have the advantage.”

Read the article here.

(Q2-1)