Putting the plug in the jug

Plugging up the holes in our understanding of sexual conflict

The fact of the matter is that many scientists think sexual behaviors and organs in animals are shaped by what is now being called “sexual conflict”- the difference in goals or benefits between two animals having sex with each other. Your “penis darts” that snails employ to beat each other to who gets to inseminate whom, for example. I read to you today from an article called “Sexual Conflict and the Dilemma of Stereotyping the Sexes”, by JA Majidian et al, in a book called Challenging Popular Myths of Sex, Gender and Biology, edited by one of my heroes, Malin Ah-King, from 2013.