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  • Agreement on the causes of sexual offending has eluded scholars because of an emphasis on studying proximate causes—as with crime in general, there are numerous variables that correlate with sexual offending. A more consilient view of sexual offending includes an evolutionary approach that attempts to answer ultimately why such behavior exists. To guide this research, Camilleri (The Oxford handbook of evolutionary perspectives on violence, homicide, and war, New York, 173–196) proposed a typology of sexual offenders that classifies offending based on two dimensions: (1) whether the behavior is an adaptation, by-product, or disorder and (2) if the mechanism is obligate or facultative. Categories resulting from this typology seem to capture the variability of sexual offending behavior. This chapter mostly reviews evidence of how sexual offending could function as an adaptation, draws links from nonhuman behavior literature, and briefly reviews alternative explanations, including by-products and disorders.

  • Discrete variation in reproductive behavior and physiology is observed in diverse taxa. Although it is known that most within-sex alternative reproductive tactics arise as a consequence of phenotypic plasticity, relatively little is known about differential neural gene expression among plastic alternative reproductive phenotypes. In the ocellated wrasse Symphodus ocellatus, males exhibit one of three alternative tactics (nesting, satellite, and sneaker) within a reproductive season, but switch tactics between years. Satellites and sneakers spawn parasitically in dominant (nesting) males' nests, but only nesting males provide parental care. Nesting and satellite males show transient cooperative defense of nests against sneakers. Here, we analyze circulating sex steroid hormone levels and neural gene expression profiles in these three male phenotypes and in females. 11-ketotestosterone (but not testosterone) was highest in nesting males, while estradiol was highest in females. Brain transcriptomes of satellites and females were most similar to each other and intermediate to nesting and sneaker males. Sneakers showed more total expression differences, whereas nesting males showed higher magnitude expression differences. Our findings reveal the surprising extent to which neural gene expression patterns vary across reproductive tactics that vary in a number of social traits, including aggression, territoriality, and cooperation, providing important insights into the molecular mechanisms that may underlie variation in cooperative and reproductive behavior. © 2014 Blackwell Verlag GmbH.

Last update from database: 3/13/26, 4:15 PM (UTC)

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