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Robotic crabs reveal that female fiddler crabs are sensitive to changes in male display rate

Overview of attention for article published in Biology Letters, January 2018
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 5% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (97th percentile)
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (82nd percentile)

Mentioned by

news
8 news outlets
blogs
2 blogs
twitter
21 X users
facebook
1 Facebook page

Citations

dimensions_citation
14 Dimensions

Readers on

mendeley
28 Mendeley
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Title
Robotic crabs reveal that female fiddler crabs are sensitive to changes in male display rate
Published in
Biology Letters, January 2018
DOI 10.1098/rsbl.2017.0695
Pubmed ID
Authors

Sophie L. Mowles, Michael D. Jennions, Patricia R. Y. Backwell

Abstract

Males often produce dynamic, repetitive courtship displays that can be demanding to perform and might advertise male quality to females. A key feature of demanding displays is that they can change in intensity: escalating as a male increases his signalling effort, but de-escalating as a signaller becomes fatigued. Here, we investigated whether female fiddler crabs, Uca mjoebergi, are sensitive to changes in male courtship wave rate. We performed playback experiments using robotic male crabs that had the same mean wave rate, but either escalated, de-escalated or remained constant. Females demonstrated a strong preference for escalating robots, but showed mixed responses to robots that de-escalated ('fast' to 'slow') compared to those that waved at a constant 'medium' rate. These findings demonstrate that females can discern changes in male display rate, and prefer males that escalate, but that females are also sensitive to past display rates indicative of prior vigour.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 21 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 28 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 28 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Ph. D. Student 6 21%
Student > Master 4 14%
Researcher 3 11%
Student > Bachelor 2 7%
Student > Doctoral Student 2 7%
Other 2 7%
Unknown 9 32%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Agricultural and Biological Sciences 15 54%
Environmental Science 4 14%
Unknown 9 32%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 83. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 22 January 2018.
All research outputs
#497,421
of 24,985,232 outputs
Outputs from Biology Letters
#532
of 3,389 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#11,909
of 453,564 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Biology Letters
#10
of 51 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 24,985,232 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 98th percentile: it's in the top 5% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 3,389 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 59.3. This one has done well, scoring higher than 84% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 453,564 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 97% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 51 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 82% of its contemporaries.