Human Gender Roles Influence Research on Animals, Swedish Biologists Argue

In a recent study published in Animal Behaviour, biology researchers Kristina Karlsson Green and Josefin Madjidian at Lund University in Sweden have shown that animals' and plants' traits and behaviour in sexual conflicts are coloured by a human viewpoint. They want to raise awareness of the issue and provoke discussion among their colleagues in order to promote objectivity and broaden the research field.

Lund researchers Kristina Karlsson Green and Josefin Madjidian have studied and measured how male and female traits and behaviour in animals' and plants' sexual conflicts are described in academic literature and also what parameters are incorporated for each sex in mathematical models of sexual conflict.

"We have found evidence of choices and interpretations that may build on researchers' own, possibly subconscious, perception of male and female. We have now identified and quantified terms used to describe male and female in sexual conflict research and seen that different terms are used depending on the sex being described. It is not just something we think and suppose," says Kristina Karlsson Green from the Department of Biology at Lund University.