The 2018 Department of Zoology and Entomology Seminar Series will continue at 11:00 on Friday 1 June 2018 in the MRI seminar room 3-5. The presentation will be delivered by Prof. Jane Waterman, Department of Biological Science, University of Manitoba, Canada. Her presentation is entitled: Reproductive skew in a non-aggressive social African ground squirrel Find below a brief summary of this presentation: Understanding the factors that influence reproductive success is fundamental to understanding how natural and sexual selection operate. Even in the most complex societies, where cooperation appears to be tied into inclusive fitness benefits, reproductive conflict can change the dynamics of social structure. Cape ground squirrels are a facultative cooperative breeder where females live in matrilineal kin groups and males live in all-male bands of unrelated individuals. In both groups, male and female aggression is rare and there does not appear to be a dominance hierarchy. Yet our genetic data suggest that less than 45% of breeding females wean offspring and only 30% of males gain any reproductive success in their lifetime. Why reproduction is so highly skewed in what superficially appears to be an egalitarian species is the focus of our current research.