My First Paper: Jakob Bro-Jørgensen

Posted on: 12 May 2022 by Dr. Jakob Bro-Jørgensen in May 2022 posts

This week we continue our 'My First Paper' Campaign, showcasing researchers and their research - with Dr Jakob Bro-Jørgensen a Senior lecturer and an evolutionary ecologist who has a broad interest in behaviour, ecology and conservation. Jakob Bro-Jørgensen from IVES tells us all about his first research paper.

What was the title of your first paper and who was it submitted to?

Bro-Jørgensen, Jakob: Overt female mate competition and preference for central males in a lekking antelope. PNAS.

How would you explain what this paper was about to your grandparents?

When the topi antelopes of the African savannah want to mate, they make their way to leks, which are mating arenas, sort of like animal discos. What I found in this study was clear evidence that female topi don’t comply with the stereotypic sex roles widely assumed to apply to mammals, that females are passive objects when it comes to sex and males are all-important in determining mating patterns. In the topi, females have clear preference for males strong enough to hold territories in the centre of the lek, and this to the extent that they will fight with each other for access to the hotshot males - and even use their horns to disrupt ongoing matings.

What was the most significant thing for you about that paper?

For a good chunk of its history, the study of sex roles in animals has been very much a product of a male-dominated society, with its roots in Victorian times. In particular when it came to mating behaviour in mammals, a stereotypic view was widespread still at the turn of the millennium – seeing males as the active, competitive sex, whereas females were cast as passive objects, the price for the males’ combat. Even Darwin’s idea of females typically being choosy when it comes to mating - which was very much accepted for birds - was widely disregarded for mammals. However, the topi shows a different story: mating patterns (and hence evolution) are very much a product of interactions between the interests of both sexes, although it may not always be as easy to document as on the topi disco!

What advice would you give to others about submitting their first paper?

If you have a finding you are excited about and think is important, you can probably also excite others - and to do that, you don’t need a series of strong of publications to your name. Just present your point across as clearly as you can: don’t put too much in there, don’t put too little in there, include exactly the key analyses that show your discovery.