During pair formation, cicadas produce acoustic signals that allow sexual partners to meet. The male is generally the emitter, producing calling songs at long range and courtship songs at short range, and the female generally the receiver. The male–female courtship behaviour of seven taxa belonging to the Palaearctic genus Tibicina is described here for the first time. Male courtship songs consisted of a succession of groups of pulses arranged in two sub-groups. They were short in duration with strong amplitude variations. In all taxa, courtship songs were preceded by a series of 1–5 audible wing-flicks. Differences in courtship song structure between two pairs of sympatric species, respectively T. corsica corsica/T. nigronervosa and T. corsica fairmairei/T. tomentosa, suggest that courtship signals could act as distinctive species mating recognition systems. In response to male acoustic signalling, females of T. c. corsica, T. c. fairmairei and T. nigronervosa produced audible wing-flicks such that both sexes established an acoustic duet ending in physical contact. In addition, males and females of T. tomentosa produced silent wing-flicks, a previously unknown behaviour, which could facilitate pheromone diffusion. Females did not exhibit a species-specific temporal pattern in acoustic reply to male courtship song and female wing-flick behaviour does not seem necessary for pair formation. Nevertheless, this strategy through male and female signalling ensured a reciprocal phonotactic approach that probably enhanced the likelihood for the two sexes to meet in complex habitats.

Spiders of the genus Argyrodes are kleptoparasites that steal prey from other web spiders. Recent studies have shown that in addition to stealing prey, they occasionally eat the silk of the host spider webs. How Argyrodes alters the two foraging tactics in the field is still unknown. The foraging behaviour of Argyrodes flavescens was observed in the south-western part of Japan where prey availability changes greatly with season. Silk-eating behaviour was commonly observed when insect prey availability on host webs was low, but when prey was abundant, only prey-stealing behaviour was observed. Spiders spent more time feeding on silk than on prey when prey was scarce. Moreover, in the season when most individuals fed on silk, only a small portion of individuals consumed prey. These results suggest that silk eating is an important alternative foraging tactic under seasonally changing environments.

The timing of birth and postnatal growth in lesser horseshoe bats Rhinolophus hipposideros were studied during 2000 and 2001 at three maternity roosts located in the provinces of Carinthia and Salzburg, Austria. Postnatal growth curves for length of forearm and body mass were determined separately for the different colonies and years. Cooler weather during June 2001 coincided with a median birth date that was 8 days later than in 2000, whilst the difference between colonies was 4 and 5 days, respectively, for the pooled data of both years. Cool temperatures in June also coincided with a longer duration of the parturition period. Postnatal growth rates were higher than in most other bat species but differences between years and colonies were considerable. These differences may be attributed to the ambient roost temperatures, whereby the young of two cooler roosts showed significantly reduced growth rate during 8 days of cool weather in 2000. Moreover, later born and therefore smaller pups were more strongly affected by low temperatures than earlier born and larger ones. The mean length of forearm of young lesser horseshoe bats at the beginning of September equalled that of adult bats, whilst their body mass was still lower. Non-volant juveniles did not cluster following the nightly emergence of adult females, and a preferred location within the roosts could not be identified. High and very low roost temperatures, however, did have an influence on the location of non-volant young in the colonies.

Costly anti-predatory defences are used in ecological time and maintained in evolutionary time by natural selection favouring individuals that survive through their use. Autotomy of expendable body parts is a striking example of a defence having multiple substantial costs, including loss of ability to use the same defence, loss of energy, and decreased growth, reproductive success and survival following autotomy, plus the energetic cost of replacing the lost body part in species capable of regenerating them. Our study shows that autotomy in the lacertid lizard Podarcis lilfordi reduces sprint speed, indicating decreased capacity to escape as well as the loss of energy. Autotomy carries substantial cost, and thus should be avoided except as a last resort. Ease of autotomy and post-autotomic movements were studied in three populations of lacertid lizards. Two were islet populations of P. lilfordi from Aire (lowest predation pressure) and Colom (intermediate predation pressure) off Minorca. The third was a mainland population of Podarcis hispanica, a closely related species from the mainland of the Iberian Peninsula where predation pressure is higher than on the islets. As predicted, a suite of autotomic traits increases the effectiveness of autotomy as a defence as predation pressure increases. With increasing predation pressure, the frequency of voluntary autotomy increases, latency to autotomy decreases, pressure on the tail needed to induce autotomy decreases, vigour of post-autotomic tail movements increases, and distance moved by the shed tail increases. Additional changes that might be related to predation pressure, but could have other causes, are the presence of tail coloration contrasting with body coloration except under the lowest predation pressure (Aire) and longer tails in the mainland species P. hispanica. Correspondence between predation pressure and the suite of autotomic traits suggests that autotomy is an important defence that responds to natural selection. Comparative data are needed to establish the generality of relationships suggested in our study of only three populations.

Monogamy in mammals is characterized by reduced sexual dimorphism in morphology and behaviour. Ten pairs of Eurasian beaver Castor fiber were radio-tracked to test how far this concept can be applied to movement behaviour by focusing on sex-related effects on territory sizes and movement patterns. Within monogamous pairs, males and females occupied territories of almost equal size during the whole radio-tracking period and more specifically after parturition. The territories of pair members overlapped on average by 81.6±14.0% SD while the territory overlap between residents and their neighbours was small to non-existent (on average between 0.5% and 2.2%). Males had larger 95% utility distributions than did females during the whole tracking period and after parturition. There was no significant difference between the 50% utility distributions for both sexes. Furthermore, males and females spent equal proportions of their time in territory border zones. There was a non-significant trend for males to move greater distances at night than females. Nightly distance moved correlated positively with territory size in females but not in males. Nightly distance moved correlated with neither body weight nor colony size. These results suggest that beavers show reduced sexual dimorphism in space use and movement patterns within adult monogamous pairs.

Male secondary sexual traits may increase the risk of predation because mating signals make them conspicuous to predators and hamper evasive manoeuvres. Males of Xenotoca variata, a viviparous freshwater fish, show on their flanks bright and colourful spots (speckles), the number of which varies geographically. In this study, the association of this variation with the presence of the piscivorous snake Thamnophis melanogaster, which co-occurs with X. variata, was investigated. A test was also done to establish whether the snake distinguishes between male fish with contrasting numbers of speckles and if the perception of speckles is influenced by water turbidity. The amount of speckling and the prevalence of snakes in key localities was assessed by using one-way mirrors, and the effect of speckles on the predatory responsiveness of snakes was evaluated by presenting them with pairs of male fish in clear and in turbid water. In localities where snakes were infrequent there was a tendency for male fish to have many speckles. The snakes preferentially approached the males with more speckles than the males with fewer speckles. The direction of the preference did not change with the conditions of the water, but the magnitude was stronger in clear water than in turbid water. The snakes also approached first the males with more speckles. These findings indicate that predation risk by T. melanogaster may select against speckles and produce population differentiation.

The tiger quoll or spotted-tailed quoll Dasyurus maculatus, a nationally threatened species, is the largest surviving carnivorous marsupial on mainland Australia and the sole surviving member of the genus in south-eastern mainland Australia. Live-trapping and radio-tracking studies at three sites in south-eastern Australia found that tiger quolls were solitary, except when mating, and that male and female tiger quolls occupied very large home ranges, both during and after the breeding season. The mean size of the home range of male tiger quolls (minimum convex polygon (MCP) 1755.4 ha, kernel 3761.7 ha) was significantly larger than the mean size of the home range of females (MCP 495.9 ha, kernel 1113.0 ha). Adult female tiger quolls displayed intrasexual territoriality throughout the year, but they seemed to tolerate the presence of female offspring. Male tiger quolls were not territorial and their home ranges overlapped both with other males and with females throughout the year. Males were recorded regularly moving back and forth between a number of female territories during the breeding season. The spatial organization of the tiger quoll recorded in this study differs markedly from that of the eastern quoll Dasyurus viverrinus and the Tasmanian devil Sarcophilus harrisii, but is similar to that of the western quoll D. geoffroii, northern quoll D. hallucatus and brush-tailed phascogale Phascogale tapoatafa. The spatial organization and home-range size of the tiger quoll dictate that conservation of the species requires management across all land tenures at the landscape level.

The purpose of this study was to determine whether hibernating European hamsters Cricetus cricetus, L., 1758 stay in their burrows all winter or if they occasionally spent time above ground. If ‘time (spent) above ground’ (TAG) occurred regularly throughout hibernation, the second objective of this work was to categorize and quantify the patterns of TAG during winter. For this purpose, 11 European hamsters were individually housed in wire mesh cages that were buried in the ground of an outdoor enclosure. Each cage was filled with soil up to ground level allowing the animals to construct their own burrows within the cages. Antennae in the bottom and top of the cage were calibrated to receive signals only when the hamsters were in their burrows or above the ground, respectively. This method enabled continuous recordings of the animal's TAG and provided ecologically meaningful results as the animals were housed in a way that closely resembled their natural habitat. About half of the hamsters stayed continuously below ground. Of these hamsters, almost all showed a dense pattern of episodes of reduced body temperature separated by only brief periods of normothermia. In contrast, the other half of the animals moved either episodically or even regularly above ground. For all of these hamsters, TAG was significantly reduced as compared to normothermic values. One hamster did not show any hibernation but did have a significantly reduced normothermic body temperature and did not leave its burrow for periods of up to 3 weeks.

The seasonal activity of the common dormouse Muscardinus avellanarius was studied in three different habitat types of central Italy: a deciduous beech wood dominated by Fagus sylvatica (Cimini Mountains), and a deciduous oak woodland with Quercus cerris and Q. pubescens and an evergreen wood dominated by holm oak Q. ilex, both along the central Tyrrhenic coast. In each site, 50 nest-boxes were fixed to trees and were monitored monthly for 2 years (May 1998–April 2000). In the beech wood site, the species showed an annual biological cycle similar to that described for populations of central and northern Europe: dormancy in winter, from the first 10 days of November to the end of December; end of hibernation in the first half of April; reproduction between May and July. On the contrary, in the two coastal sites, nest-boxes were occupied from October to June, and the breeding period was in autumn, showing that a winter dormancy phase is absent, probably owing to the mild winter. On the other hand, no dormice or new nests were observed in nest-boxes in summer suggesting that a dormancy phase occurred in summer, probably owing to dry climatic conditions. Two patterns of biological cycle therefore emerged from the results: a temperate pattern in beech forest with winter dormancy and spring reproduction, and a Mediterranean pattern in coastal habitats with autumnal reproduction, winter activity and summer dormancy.

This paper reports on efforts to trap jaguars Panthera onca on camera in the dry forests of the Kaa-Iya del Gran Chaco National Park in Bolivia. Ad hoc camera trapping provided certain information on jaguar presence and habits, but was limited in application. Activity patterns showed that jaguars are active all day, particularly at one of three sites, with peaks in the morning and evening the more common pattern. Minimum observed home range was variable, with males (up to 65 km2) occupying more area than females (up to 29 km2). The authors adapted systematic methodologies first developed to survey tigers in India, based on individually distinctive pelage patterns in tigers and jaguars. Abundance is estimated using capture–recapture statistical analysis, and a sample area defined based on the maximum distance that individual jaguars move during the sample period. The methodology has proved successful for jaguars in dry Chaco forest, population densities of 1/30–45 km2 and 1/20 km2 are estimated in the two most extensive landscape systems of Kaa-Iya. The entire 34 400 km2 protected area is estimated to sustain a population of over 1000 adult and juvenile jaguars, the largest single population of jaguar reported anywhere, and a viable population for long-term jaguar conservation.

In species of many taxa, males alter their investment in ejaculates depending on perceived levels of male–male competition and female mating history/age. Males of the tettigoniid Acanthoplus discoidalis produce a large sperm ampulla and associated spermatophylax, resulting in a long refractory period for males. Female A. discoidalis mate once before laying eggs, and then mate and lay eggs in a random order. The males, therefore, only have a high confidence of paternity when mating with virgins. Male A. discoidalis were studied to determine if they alter their investment in sperm count, spermatophylax mass and water content of spermatophylaces when mating with virgin and non-virgin females. No difference in investment in any spermatophore characteristics between virgins and non-virgins was found, but males do reject non-virgins more often, preferring to transfer spermatophores to virgin females. Males seem to prefer females of a lower mass, where higher mass may reflect increasing female age (and hence likelihood of previous matings) through advanced development of eggs. Outright rejection, rather than changes in spermatophore investment may be because of constraints in tailoring large spermatophores that develop over relatively long periods of time between matings.

Recent advances in molecular scatology have allowed the development of reliable and non-invasive methods that can be applied in monitoring of small carnivores, without disturbance of the animals. Here a method is described that can be used to differentiate European mink Mustela lutreola, polecat M. putorius and American mink M. vison based on the analysis of DNA extracted from faeces. It consists of a nested PCR of a region of the mitochondrial D-loop followed by digestion of the resulting 240 bp amplicons with the restriction enzymes RsaI and MspI. The restriction patterns of both enzymes, when used together, are found to detect species-specific sequence variation. Two different haplotypes for European mink (AA, AB), another two for the polecat (AC, AD) and one for American mink (BC) can also be discriminated by this technique. Two new haplotypes for the mitocondrial D-loop of mustelids are described after DNA sequencing.

The asymmetric male and female genitalia of the spider Metagonia mariguitarensis (González-Sponga) are described, based on semi-thin serial sections and SEM photographs, and several male genital and non-genital characters are measured and analysed statistically. Left male genital bulbs are significantly larger than right bulbs while right palpal tibiae are significantly stronger than left tibiae, suggesting a functional segregation into a more predominantly displaying right palp and a more predominantly sperm-transferring left palp. Despite several structural differences between right and left male palps, however, there is no indication of qualitative differences: both bulbs transfer sperm, and both palps are provided with a full set of muscles. The female internal genitalia are provided with an unpaired receptacle that is connected to the uterus externus by a wide and complicated duct and to the valve separating uterus externus from uterus internus by a short narrow duct. This resembles entelegyne genitalia, but the functional details remain unknown. The evolution of asymmetric genitalia is discussed in a wider framework, with the conclusion that the causes of asymmetry in spiders may be different from those in other arthropods such as insects and copepods.