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Birds do it. Bees probably do it. No one's sure whether educated fleas do it. What they do is have same-sex relationships and, in a new review of published research on the subject, biologists have started to consider what it might mean for the evolution of the animals in question.
Nathan Bailey and Marlene Zuk, biologists at the University of California, Riverside, found that same-sex relationships were a universal phenomenon in the animal kingdom, seen in everything from worms to frogs to birds. "It's clear that same-sex sexual behavior extends far beyond the well-known examples that dominate both the scientific and popular literature: for example bonobos, dolphins, penguins and fruit flies," said Bailey.
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Bailey and Zuk are also researching the Laysan albatross, a species in which females form same-sex pairs and rear young together. "Same-sex behavior in this species may not be aberrant, but instead can arise as an alternative reproductive strategy," they said.
Almost a third of Laysan albatross couples are female-female pairs and they are more successful than unpaired females when it comes to rearing chicks.
"Same-sex sexual behaviors are flexibly deployed in a variety of circumstances, for example as alternative reproductive tactics, as cooperative breeding strategies, as facilitators of social bonding or as mediators of intrasexual conflict. Once this flexibility is established, it becomes in and of itself a selective force that can drive selection on other aspects of physiology, life history, social behaviour and even morphology," said Bailey.http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/blog/2009/jun/17/same-sex-relationships-gay-animals
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