Female family physicians in obstetrics: achieving personal balance.

OBJECTIVE: To describe the experiences of female family physicians who practise obstetrics in balancing professional obligations with personal and family needs, given the unique challenges that such practice poses for these physicians. DESIGN: Qualitative study. SETTING: Ontario. PARTICIPANTS: A purposefully selected sample of nine female family physicians who met the criteria of being married, having children and currently practising obstetrics. OUTCOME MEASURES: Experiences of female family physicians and their strategies in their personal, family and professional lives that enable them to continue practising obstetrics. RESULTS: All participants continued to practise obstetrics because of the pleasure they derived from it, despite the challenges of balancing the unpredictable demands of obstetrics with their personal and family needs. To continue in obstetrics, they needed to make changes in their lives, either through a gradual, evolutionary process or in response to a critical event. Alterations to work and family arrangements permitted them to meet the challenges and led to increased satisfaction. Changes included making supportive call-group arrangements, limiting work hours and the number of births attended and securing help with household duties. CONCLUSIONS: An in-depth examination, through the use of qualitative methods, showed the reasons why some female family physicians continue to practise obstetrics despite the stressful aspects of doing so. This knowledge may be useful for women who are residents or experienced clinicians and who are considering including obstetrics in their practice.     

Female mate preference to maximize paternal care. II. Female competition leads to monogamy

ABSTRACT A two-step game model of female mate preference and paternal care is examined, with a particular focus on the case of two females and two males. In a mating season, females choose their mates, and in the following breeding season males invest in paternal care, knowing the likelihood of their paternity in chicks. If parental ability is the same between individuals of each sex, the evolutionarily stable mating pattern is always monogamy. If females differ in fecundity and males differ in paternal care capacity, monogamy with assortative mating is likely to be evolutionarily stable. If the male cost function increases at a strongly accelerating rate, however, polyandry is evolutionarily stable when the difference of female fecundity is very large, but the game may have no evolutionarily stable state when the difference of female fecundity is small. The care graph (in which females are connected to males giving paternal care to their chicks) is often much simpler than the mating graph (in which females are connected to males they accepted). To be exact, no "loop" should be included in the evolutionarily stable care graph for the general case of n females and m males. This prediction is in accord with the observed prevalence of social monogamy in spite of genetic promiscuity among altricial birds.     

Female sperm storage in reptiles.

Internal fertilization and oviparity most likely are symplesiomorphies for modern reptiles, and viviparity has evolved independently numerous times in Sauria and Serpentes. Oviducal sperm storage is known in females of all taxa except Amphisbaenia. However, in Rhynchocephalia and Crocodilia, sperm storage is poorly studied, and specialized sperm storage tubules (Ssts) are unknown. We use the molecular phylogenetic hypothesis [(Chelonia+Archosauria) (Squamata)] to trace evolution of sperm storage characters. Ssts arose independently in Chelonia and Squamata. Turtles possess albumen-secreting glands in the anterior half of the oviduct (the tuba or isthmus), and the most distal of these glands also serve as Ssts; in addition, some turtles possess Ssts in the adjacent segment of the oviduct, the uterus. Squamates lack albumen-secreting glands, and the ancestral state is possession of Ssts in the posterior infundibulum (uterine tube). Secondarily, iguanids have evolved vaginal Ssts. In this paper, we present the first ultrastructural observations on vaginal Ssts in lizards, using Anolis sagrei (Polychrotidae). Proximally, the neck of these simple tubular glands continues the alternation of ciliated and secretory cells lining the lumen of the vagina. However, the epithelial cells of the distal sperm storage area are neither secretory nor ciliated. The Ssts of Anolis are more similar to those of birds more than to infundibular receptacles in snakes and lizards.     

Female dominance in Indri indri.

A total of 15 months were spent on field research in eastern Madagascar studying the largest extant lemur Indri indri. Social relationships were analysed according to the frequency and direction of affiliative and agonistic behaviours, and with respect to the relative tree positions and behavioural synchrony of group members. The relationship between the adult male and adult female in each group was distinguished by the subordinance of the former. Between group variation in adults' relationships are examined with respect to the function of this behaviour.     

Female sperm storage in amphibians.

The three orders of extant amphibians are Gymnophiona, Anura, and Urodela. Although all gymnophionans apparently have internal fertilization and many are viviparous, female sperm storage is unknown. Internal fertilization has convergently evolved in a few anurans, but females of just one species, Ascaphus truei, are known to possess oviductal sperm storage tubules (SSTs). The SSTs of A. truei are similar anatomically to such glands in squamate reptiles. This similarity is convergence due to similar functional adaptations and/or internal design constraints. In salamanders and newts (Urodela), absence of sperm storage in females is the ancestral condition (three families). In the derived condition, sperm storage occurs in cloacal glands called spermathecae, and their possession is a synapomorphy for females in the suborder Salamandroidea (seven families). Salamandroids are the only vertebrates with cloacal sperm storage glands. In this paper, a phenetic analysis of variation in spermathecal characters reveals patterns of convergence in certain spermathecal characters in unrelated taxa that breed in similar habitats. In the family Salamandridae, a role in sperm nutrition for the spermathecal epithelium is questioned, and the widespread occurrence of spermiophagy is related to other reproductive strategies. I propose how the packaging of sperm in structurally different types of spermathecae may influence male paternity.