Research Catalog
Promiscuity : an evolutionary history of sperm competition / Tim Birkhead.
- Title
- Promiscuity : an evolutionary history of sperm competition / Tim Birkhead.
- Author
- Birkhead, Tim
- Publication
- Cambridge, Mass. : Harvard University Press, 2000.
Items in the Library & Off-site
Filter by
1 Item
| Status | Format | Access | Call Number | Item Location |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Text | Request in advance | SOC. B 535 p | Off-site |
Details
- Description
- xiii, 272 pages : illustrations (some color); 22 cm
- Summary
- "Tim Birkhead reveals a wonderful world in which males and females vie with each other as they strive to maximize their reproductive success. Both sexes have evolved staggeringly sophisticated ways to get what they want - often at the expense of the other. He introduces us to fish whose first encounter locks them together for life in a perpetual sexual embrace; hermaphrodites who "joust" with their reproductive organs, each trying to inseminate the other without being inseminated; and tiny flies whose seminal fluid is so toxic that it not only destroys the sperm of rival males but eventually kills the female.
- He explores the long and tortuous road leading to our current state of knowledge, from Aristotle's observations on chickens, to the first successful artificial insemination in the seventeenth century, to today's ingenious molecular markers for assigning paternity. And he shows how much human behavior - from the wife-sharing habits of Inuit hunters to Charlie Chaplin's paternity case - is influenced by sperm competition."--Jacket.
- Subject
- Sexual selection in animals
- Sperm competition
- Reproduction
- Promiscuity
- Sexual behavior in animals
- Evolution (Biology)
- Natural selection
- Sexual Behavior, Animal
- Biological Evolution
- Selection, Genetic
- Spermatozoa > physiology
- Mating Preference, Animal
- Sélection sexuelle chez les animaux
- Compétition spermatique
- Reproduction
- Promiscuité
- Comportement sexuel chez les animaux
- Évolution (Biologie)
- Sélection naturelle
- evolution
- Sexual selection in animals
- Sperm competition
- Promiscuity
- Casual sex
- Bibliography (note)
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 235-262).
- Processing Action (note)
- committed to retain
- Contents
- Competition, Choice and Sexual Conflict -- Paternity and Protection -- Genitalia -- Spern, Ejaculation, and Ova -- Copulation, Insemination and fertilization -- Mechanisms of Sperm Competition and Sperm Choice -- The Benefits of Polyandry.
- ISBN
- 0674004450
- 9780674004450
- 0674006666
- 9780674006669
- LCCN
- 00040923
- OCLC
- 44313321
- SCSB-10459362
- Owning Institutions
- Harvard Library