The risky business of mate-searching often leaves the actively searching sex facing threats and rapidly changing conditions. Yet, active mate-searching behaviour is rarely studied in invertebrates, and we have a limited understanding of how mate-searching strategies have evolved to cope with risks posed by harsh weather. We investigated how mate-searching males move through their habitat and how their movement is affected by weather conditions in the Sydney funnel-web spider, Atrax robustus, one of the world's most venomous spiders. As is common in mygalomorph spiders, females are highly sedentary and are thought to spend their entire lives in a single burrow, whereas males must permanently abandon their burrows to mate during the breeding season. Nineteen male spiders were fitted with micro-radio transmitters and tracked during their mating seasons over several consecutive years in Lane Cove National Park, in Sydney, Australia. Males moved at night, typically in a zig-zag pattern, and were found in new locations on approximately 50% of daily resightings. Males often spent several days in a female burrow and were recorded visiting multiple females; some female burrows were also visited by multiple males. When outside a female's burrow, males constructed and occupied temporary shelters ('temporacula'). Males were most likely to move when there was no rain and they (more tentatively) moved further on dry, warm nights after cool days. Our findings suggest that mate-searching A. robustus males prefer to search for females in less risky environmental conditions, revealing novel riskminimizing strategies. (c) 2025 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd on behalf of The Association for the Study of Animal Behaviour. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/4.0/).

Teaching science students about ethics is important given how technology has the potential to provide social and political power. However, providing science students with meaningful ethical experiences is difficult to do at scale. In this study, we use a digital game-based learning approach to provide first year science students with an understanding of ethics. In this game, students are tasked with becoming the commander of a new space colony that must make various decisions for the survival of the colony. After gameplay, students can visualise how their peers answered the game questions. This allows them to see the variation in the responses from their class. Using established surveys, we show that students’ ethical perspectives changed as a function of playing the game and reflecting on their experience. We thus highlight and discuss how a game-based learning approach can provide students with ethical experiences to help them better understand the role of ethics in science at scale.

Typically, men prefer violent video games more than women do. However, little is known about the motivational factors driving this greater preference for violent games in men. The integrative motivational model of violent video games (IMT-VVG) suggests that the pull of violent video games should be strongest in men because men have faced stronger evolutionary pressures to physically compete within an explicit hierarchy relative to women. In two experiments, individuals were led to believe they were competing (Experiment 1; N = 122) or cooperating (Experiment 2; N = 121) with an ostensible same-gender partner to complete a physical strength program. The partner was presented as either high or low in physical formidability. Participants then selected a violent or non-violent video game to play for up to 15 min. In Experiment 1, men showed a stronger preference for violent video games than women when they anticipated facing a stronger opponent in an impending physical strength competition. In Experiment 2, for the physical cooperation task, men also chose the violent game over the non-violent game, but did so independent of the formidability of their cooperation partner. In sum, these data suggest that men may be attracted to violent video games when faced with a competitive task that requires physical strength, but not necessarily a cooperative task. In support of this hypothesis, participants who played the violent games reported greater subjective toughness after game play. These results provide evidence for a new integrative motivational theory of violent video game play.

Our understanding of sexual selection is advancing with new technologies that tag individuals or their sperm, revealing how females use post-copulatory processes to discriminate between competing mates. Many tagging methods have been devised primarily for model insect organisms like Drosophila or Gryllidae. Developing such novel methods, however, is expensive and requires intensive investment. In this experiment, we trial the use of Rhodamine B (RhB) and Rhodamine 110 (Rh110) in a small arachnid, the bulb mite Rhizoglyphus echinopus, for pre- and post-copulatory observations as it is a relatively inexpensive and simple way to tag individuals and their ejaculate proteins. First, we tested whether RhB and Rh110 applied to food can be used as a tagging method to track and distinguish between individuals. Second, we explored whether Rhodamine applied in this way can be used to track sperm transfer. We found that both tagging probes worked well in tagging individuals and that we were able to distinguish between individuals using both LED and fluorescent microscopy. We also found that Rhodamine degraded rapidly in the animals, likely due to their fast metabolism. Due to the rapid degradation, we observed variable results in the sperm transfer trials. We suggest multiple uses for Rhodamine and highlight other invertebrates where this method may come into use for the study of sexual selection.

People tend to befriend others similar to themselves, generating a pattern called homophily. However, existing studies on friendship patterns often rely on surveys that assess the perspective of relatively few participants on their friendships but do not measure actualized friendship patterns. Here, we used data from a large Slovakian online social network to assess the role of gender, age, and body mass index (BMI) in same-gender online connections among more than 400,000 users. We found that age and BMI homophily occurred in both men’s and women’s same-gender connections, but somewhat more strongly among men’s. Yet, as women diverged in BMI, their connections were less likely to be reciprocated. We discuss how the evolutionary legacy of men’s coalitional competition (e.g., warfare) and women’s mating competition or recruitment of allocare providers might contribute to these patterns in modern same-gender relationships. For example, men’s engagement in physical activities may lead to similar formidability levels among their same-gender peers. Altogether, our findings highlight the importance of trait similarity to same-gender friendship patterns.

BackgroundSerious games have the potential to transform the field of cognitive assessment. The use of serious game–based cognitive assessments in prison environments is particularly exciting. This is because interventions are urgently needed to address the rapid increase in the number of currently incarcerated older adults globally and because of the heightened risks of dementia and cognitive decline present in this population. Game-based assessments are assumed to be fun, engaging, and suitable alternatives to traditional cognitive testing, but these assumptions remain mostly untested in older adults. This is especially true for older adults in prison, whose preferences and needs are seldom heard and may deviate from those previously captured in studies on cognition and serious games.ObjectiveThis study aimed to understand the design preferences of older adults in prison for a game-based cognitive assessment.MethodsThis study used reflexive thematic analysis, underpinned by critical realism, and applied the technique of abduction. Overall, 4 focus groups with a total of 20 participants were conducted with older adults (aged ≥50 years; aged ≥45 years for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people) across 3 distinct prison environments in Australia.ResultsSelf-determination theory was used as a theoretical foundation to interpret the results. Overall, 3 themes were generated: Goldilocks—getting gameplay difficulty just right through optimal challenge (the first theme emphasizes the participants’ collective desire for an individualized optimal level of difficulty in serious gameplay), Avoiding Childish Graphics—gimmicky gameplay can be condescending (the second theme raises the importance of avoiding immature and childlike gameplay features, as some older end users in prison felt that these can be condescending), and A Balanced Diet—meaningful choice and variety keeps game-based assessments fun (the third theme highlights the strong user preference for meaningful choice and variety in any serious game–based cognitive assessment to maximize in-game autonomy).ConclusionsThe collection of these themes provides novel insights into key game design preferences of marginalized older adults.

The effects of playing violent video games are well-documented; however, relatively little research has investigated why much of the world's population plays these games. We present a novel theory to explain the motivational pull of violent video games: the integrative motivational theory of violent video games (IMT-VVG). Violent video games resonate with players because they offer opportunities to fulfill psychological needs and motivations for obtaining status, feeling dominant, and feeling like a high-quality intimate partner. Violent video games may also provide psychological protection against the fear of death by allowing players to inure themselves to dangerous situations. They may also allow for the expression and regulation of anger. Unlike traditional play fighting, violent video games can be played by nearly everyone regardless of physical capacities. Thus, a much broader swathe of humanity can experience these effects of violent video games. The IMT-VVG explains potential negative effects elicited by violent video game play such as the tendency for sexism in some male gamers. Individual differences contribute to the motivation to play violent video games; people more likely to play are from low status groups, desire to maintain their high status through dominance, and have a strong interest in sex. Future directions informed by the IMT-VVG may investigate possible prosocial effects of violent video games (e.g., leadership, helping team members) and whether violent video games can be beneficial to people from low status groups (e.g., increasing agency).

Male mate choice occurs in several animal species, but we know little about the factors that influence the expression of this behaviour. Males vary in their capacity to acquire mates (i.e. male quality), which could be crucial to male mate choice expression but it is often overlooked. Using a meta-analytical approach, we explore interindividual variation in the expression of male mate choice by comparing the mating investment of males of different qualities and phenotypes to high- and low-quality females. We used two datasets that together contained information from 60 empirical studies, comprising 52 species. We found that males of all qualities and phenotypes prefer high-quality females, but differ in the strength of such preference. High- and medium-quality males are choosier than low-quality males. Similarly, males that are larger or in greater body condition are choosier than their counterparts. In contrast, male body mass and age are not associated with changes in male mate choice. We also show that experimental design may influence our understanding of male mating investment patterns, which may limit the generalisation of our findings. Nonetheless, we argue that male quality may be an important feature in the expression of male mate choice.

In the field of sexual selection, it is common to encounter the idea of ‘sex roles’: choosy and caring females and competitive and promiscuous males. Despite criticism of these stereotypes from some evolutionary biologists, sex roles still appear as a norm in much of the sexual selection-related literature. This may be because scientists anthropomorphize animal behaviours, which raises the question of whether demographic traits and experiences can influence one's perception regarding sex differences in nature. Here we tested whether age, gender, country and experiences are associated with different perceptions of sex differences in nature. We conducted a survey in which we asked participants about their perception of the frequency at which certain behaviours associated with sex roles (promiscuity, mate choice, intrasexual competition and parental care) occur in nonhuman animals for each sex. We found that participants' country, research experience with certain taxonomic groups and research experience with sex-specific topics were associated with different perceptions of sex differences in nonhuman animals; participants from more gender-unequal countries showed greater agreement with the idea of sex roles. In contrast, participants who had experience with mechanisms not predicted by the idea of sex roles such as male mate choice, paternal care and female–female competition showed lower agreement with the idea of sex roles than other participants. We suggest that increasing social diversity in academia and encouraging researchers to diversify the sexes and taxa of animals they use to investigate reproductive behaviours could challenge pre-existing biases in animal sex differences.

Mate value is tied to appearance and age in women, and social status and wealth in men. Theory surrounding self-perceived mate value suggests that mate value shows relatively little situational plasticity. Here we challenge this concept by asking participants to compete in video games to test (a) whether self-perceived and actual performance affects subjective mate value, and (b) whether subjective mate value affects mate preferences. By randomly allocating participants to play either a violent or nonviolent game in three separate experiments, we show that both men and women who played a violent game had significantly lower self-perceived performance, and as a result, reported a lower self-perceived mate value. We also demonstrate that this effect led to different preferences for short-term mating partners, mainly among women. Our results strongly suggest that mate value in humans is situationally dynamic and responds to recent contest experiences, as it does in nonhumans. We discuss our results with reference to online multiplayer digital gaming experiences and how variation in self-perceived mate value affects mating market dynamics.

Competition is a key biotic factor that often structures natural communities. Many attempts to disentangle how competition shapes natural communities have relied on experiments on simplified systems or through simple mathematical models. But these simplified approaches are limited in their ability to represent the complexity seen in more natural settings. Here, we considered the competitive pairwise dynamics between four saprotrophic fungal species. We tested whether the contextual environment changed these dynamics, repeating competitive experiments in a simple agar media and a more ecologically realistic wood block setting. We found that the competitive outcomes on agar media differed from those within the wood blocks. While superior competitors were identified across all pairwise interactions on agar, within the wood blocks, two of six interactions resulted in deadlock, where neither competitor could breach territory of the other, and one interaction resulted in a reversed competitive outcome. These results suggest that the complexity within natural substrates can alter the strength of interspecific interactions and may contribute to coexistence and the resulting high diversity of fungi often observed within wood.

Understanding diversity has been a pursuit in evolutionary biology since its inception. A challenge arises when sexual selection has played a role in diversification. Questions of what constitutes a 'species', homoplasy vs. synapomorphy, and whether sexually selected traits show phylogenetic signal have hampered work on many systems. Peacock spiders are famous for sexually selected male courtship dances and peacock-like abdominal ornamentation. This lineage of jumping spiders currently includes over 90 species classified into two genera, Maratus and Saratus. Most Maratus species have been placed into groups based on secondary sexual characters, but evolutionary relationships remain unresolved. Here we assess relationships in peacock spiders using phylogenomic data (ultraconserved elements and RAD-sequencing). Analyses reveal that Maratus and the related genus Saitis are paraphyletic. Many, but not all, morphological groups within a 'core Maratus' lade are recovered as genetic clades but we find evidence for undocumented speciation. Based on original observations of male courtship, our comparative analyses suggest that courtship behaviour and peacock-like abdominal ornamentation have evolved sequentially, with some traits inherited from ancestors and others evolving repeatedly and independently from 'simple' forms. Our results have important implications for the taxonomy of these spiders, and provide a much-needed evolutionary framework for comparative studies of the evolution of sexual signal characters.

Pre-maturation social experiences may affect post-maturation reproductive strategies of females, including mating preferences and investment in offspring. Whether pre-maturation social experiences affect other aspects of females’ reproductive strategies, including the number of accepted males and post-copulatory decisions, is still an open question. To address this question, we performed laboratory experiments using the highly polyandrous cricket Teleogryllus commodus . Previous studies showed that juvenile females reared in an acoustic environment with male calls of different rates (MIX) are more responsive to highly attractive calls than females reared in an environment with male calls of only high calling rates (HIGH). We exposed juvenile females to the same two acoustic environments (MIX and HIGH) and estimated the number of accepted males, time of spermatophore retention, and offspring quality. We found that the acoustic environment did not change the number of accepted males, indicating that the higher responsiveness shown in a previous study does not translate into high degree of polyandry. An increased number of mates reduced offspring quality, suggesting that polyandry is costly to females. Finally, when compared with females of the HIGH group, females of the MIX group retained spermatophores for shorter periods and produced higher quality offspring if mated with highly attractive males. This finding suggests that both the pre-maturation acoustic environment and the quality of the mates found by the adult females determine their post-copulatory decisions and eventually offspring quality. Taken together, our results indicate that both the pre- and post-mating strategies of females are subject to socially cued plasticity. Significance statement There is increasing evidence that pre-maturation experiences affect mating decisions of females after maturity, making them more or less selective. Both the pre-maturation social environment and the quality of potential mates found by an adult female may determine the number and quality of accepted males, which in turn may influence offspring quality. We experimentally tested this hypothesis using a highly polyandrous cricket species and showed that the pre-maturation acoustic environment does not affect the number and attractiveness of males accepted by the females. However, offspring quality was determined by an interaction between the pre-maturation acoustic environment and attractiveness of males accepted by the females. This result provides a link between the pre- and post-maturation social experience of a female and the quality of her offspring.

The rapid move to online teaching during the COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated that universities and schools were unprepared for large-scale online teaching. Poor internet capabilities and lack of interactive online opportunities meant that lectures and laboratory practicals were replaced with videos and online assignments, decreasing student interaction and hands-on learning opportunities. In this seminar, I discuss how we used technologies that students already use in their daily lives (YouTube Live, Twitch, Discord, Mobile devices) to engage them in authentic experiential online learning where students felt part of a community of learners. In our university classes, lecture attendance grew from 13% for face-to-face lectures to 59% in online lectures. We also saw a 10-fold increase in online interactivity during live online lectures. We saw similar results for our science outreach with primary and high school students using Arludo apps—video games designed to teach scientific concepts through scenario-based experiences. All students stated this form of teaching helped them feel like part of a scientific community. Our combination of a social online learning management system with a real-time chat interface and mobile games to engage in scientific thinking and data collection provides an inexpensive and exciting way forward to teach online.

Spider major ampullate (MA) silk, with its combination of strength and extensibility, outperforms any synthetic equivalents. There is thus much interest in understanding its underlying materiome. While the expression of the different silk proteins (spidroins) appears an integral component of silk performance, our understanding of the nature of the relationship between the spidroins, their constituent amino acids and MA silk mechanics is ambiguous. To provide clarity on these relationships across spider species, we performed a meta-analysis using phylogenetic comparative methods. These showed that glycine and proline, both of which are indicators of differential spidroin expression, had effects on MA silk mechanics across the phylogeny. We also found serine to correlate with silk mechanics, probably via its presence within the carboxyl and amino-terminal domains of the spidroins. From our analyses, we concluded that the spidroin expression shifts across the phylogeny from predominantly MaSp1 in the MA silks of ancestral spiders to predominantly MaSp2 in the more derived spiders' silks. This trend was accompanied by an enhanced ultimate strain and decreased Young's modulus in the silks. Our meta-analysis enabled us to decipher between real and apparent influences on MA silk properties, providing significant insights into spider silk and web coevolution and enhancing our capacity to create spider silk-like materials.

Online teaching and learning are now the new normal. Despite this rapid shift to online, lecturers still have no reliable means to provide students with hands on learning opportunities, especially in STEM related fields. As a result, universities are struggling to provide interactive and social activities to replace the in-person activities they had in tutorials and laboratory practicals. In this workshop, I will highlight the suite of mobile applications and games I have co-designed with scientists and researchers to help excite and engage students in STEM fields. These apps are intuitive and designed to encourage students to interact with one another to easily and quickly collect and visualise data in real time so they can practice critical thinking and teamwork, developing necessary soft skills. This means experiments are accurately completed in 10 minutes, allowing teachers to spend more time with their students. With over 30 different apps that help teachers engage their students in biology, maths, chemistry, psychology, ethics – these apps teach across an integrated curriculum. I will also highlight how I have developed an engaging and interactive online approach and presence to deliver my online teaching. I will demonstrate the hardware and software I have assembled to be able to perform these lessons. Come prepared to be part of the workshop and work together with others exactly as your students would.

Much of what students learn in science is invisible, which means that theoretical scientific concepts underlying student understanding are often difficult to explain. Additionally, the data required to visualise these theoretical concepts are often difficult to collect as it requires specialised equipment and is time consuming. It is thus difficult to provide students with the hands-on experiences they require to master these concepts; this is a more fundamental problem in online-only courses. To solve this problem, I’ve created a library of mobile applications that engage students in scientific thinking while encouraging peer-to-peer social interactions. As they interact, these applications collect scientific data that allows students to quickly and accurately visualise the concepts they are learning. In this manner, students gain hand-on experiences through immersive situational learning, and gain novel insights into more difficult to understand theoretical concepts as they perform the behaviours associated with the data gathering. In other words, the library of mobile apps allows students to rapidly and accurately practice being scientists, allowing students to learn through lived experiences. Because the learning opportunities are digital, it means students in face-to-face and online learning environments have similar opportunities. I will discuss the outcomes of trials using these apps.

Understanding how and why animal secretions vary in property has important biomimetic implications as desirable properties might covary. Spider major ampullate (MA) silk, for instance, is a secretion earmarked for biomimetic applications, but many of its properties vary among and between species across environments. Here, we tested the hypothesis that MA silk colour, protein structure and thermal properties covary when protein uptake is manipulated in the spider Trichonephila plumipes. We collected silk from adult female spiders maintained on a protein-fed or protein-deprived diet. Based on spectrophotometric quantifications, we classified half the silks as ‘bee visible’ and the other half ‘bee invisible’. Wide angle X-ray diffraction and differential scanning calorimetry were then used to assess the silk's protein structure and thermal properties, respectively. We found that although protein structures and thermal properties varied across our treatments only the thermal properties covaried with colour. This ultimately suggests that protein structure alone is not responsible for MA silk thermal properties, nor does it affect silk colours. We speculate that similar ecological factors act on silk colour and thermal properties, which should be uncovered to inform biomimetic programmes.

Violent video game play can alter how people process social information. We examined the extent to which violent video game play influenced anger facial recognition, perceptions of one's own fighting ability, and perceptions of others' toughness. In three experiments (N=868), participants were randomly assigned to play a violent or non-violent video game in the laboratory for 15 min (Experiments 1 and 2) or online for 5 min (Experiment 3). Participants then completed anger recognition tasks. Participants also indicated when they would back out of a physical confrontation with images of men that morphed from feminine to masculine. They rated these same target images on how tough they were and how much they could bench press. Participants rated themselves on how well they would fare in a fight against the men. Although not perfectly replicated, the general pattern of findings suggest that violent video game play impaired anger recognition, increased players' self-perceived fighting ability and reduced perceptions of the target men's toughness. Several effects were moderated by gender and/or trait aggression. These results provide insight into improved subjective fighting ability as a reinforcing feature of violent video games that may make them highly attractive to players.