Second, sexual reproduction is complicated and there is much we still do not know. Third, post-copulatory sexual selection embraces many different areas of biology, from anatomy, behaviour, physiology and increasingly, genetics and molecular biology, generating new combinations of approaches. Fourth, new developments in various

fields have the potential to help us better understand post-copulatory sexual selection. For example, fMRI brain scans and neurobiology will allow us to investigate previously unexplored aspects of promiscuity: does the prolonged copulation and orgasm that occurs (uniquely) in the red-billed buffalo weaver Bubalornis niger (Winterbottom, Burke & Birkhead, 2001), for example, BVD-523 nmr generate similar sensations as occur in primates, including ourselves, during copulation? New techniques, such as the fluorescent labelling of live sperm from different males (e.g. Fisher & Hoekstra, 2010) and visualizing the way they interact within the female reproductive tract (Manier et al., 2010), will change the way we view reproduction, literally.

The major unanswered question in post-copulatory sexual selection is the adaptive significance of female promiscuity. Over the past 30 years, behavioural AZD2281 chemical structure ecologists have expended a huge amount of effort attempting to answer this question. There is no shortage of hypotheses and while many of the hypotheses individually have some support, absolutely no consensus has been reached regarding the adaptive significance of female promiscuity. It may be that there is no single explanation, but it is also possible that like John Ray, unable to explain his expugnable appetite or the multitude of sperm, that at present we simply do not have the right conceptual framework Dolichyl-phosphate-mannose-protein mannosyltransferase for thinking about female promiscuity. We may need a paradigm shift. It would be arrogant and naïve to think that there wont be one in this area, and when it comes and the truth behind female promiscuity is revealed, we too will say ‘How stupid not to have thought of that’. I am extremely grateful to my research assistants, research students and post-docs

for (mostly) being an inspiration: Patricia Brekke, Sara Calhim, Isabelle Charmantier, Charlie Cornwallis, Nicola Hemmings, Simone Immler, Stefan Leupold, Jim Mossman and Tom Pizzari. I have also benefited enormously from discussions with David Hosken, Geoff Parker and Scott Pitnick and owe a special debt to Bob Montgomerie not only for valuable discussion but also for constructive comments on the paper. “
“Much of the work that we do as zoologists and publish in Journal of Zoology relates to the search for pattern in form and function (Bennett, 2008; Boyd, 2007). This quest, in many ways, tracks the relative maturity of our various disciplines. The Journal is calling for papers that cut across boundaries that traditionally separate the field of zoology from more specialized disciplines.