Male harassment drives females to alter habitat use and leads to segregation of the sexes.

Sexual conflict is ubiquitous across taxa. It often results in male harassment of females for mating opportunities that are costly for females, in some cases reducing reproductive success and increasing mortality. One strategy that females may employ to avoid sexual harassment is to segregate spatially from males. In fact, we do find sexual segregation in habitat use in species that have high levels of sexual conflict; however, the role of sexual harassment in driving such segregation remains poorly understood. Here, we demonstrate experimentally in a population of wild Trinidadian guppies Poecilia reticulata that male sexual harassment drives females into habitats that they otherwise do not prefer to occupy. In support of the social factors hypothesis for sexual segregation, which states that social factors such as harassment drive sexual segregation, this female behaviour leads to segregation of the sexes. In the presence of males, females actively select areas of high predation risk, but low male presence, and thus trade off increased predation risk against reduced sexual harassment.

Substance abuse in women and a past history of child abuse - abstract

The association between physical and/or sexual abuse and substance abuse in women has frequently been noted. This study sought to identify the frequency with which such a history of child abuse was reported by a group of females admitted to a treatment centre for substance abuse. All women (70) admitted in 1991 and 1992 to the Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment Centre, Caura, Trinidad, were interviewed about the occurrence of either physical or sexual abuse in childhood or adolescence. All men (95) admitted for alcohol dependence were also interviewed and served as a comparison group. Twenty female clients (28.6 per cent) admitted to being abused as children, 36 (51.4 per cent) denied any history of child abuse while 14 (20 per cent) refused to respond. Subgroups of alcohol- and cocaine-dependent women gave similar frequencies of positive histories of child abuse (26.9 per cent and 29.6 per cent respectively). Only 12.6 per cent of male alcoholic admissions gave a positive history of child abuse and one-third (33.7 per cent) of the sample refused to respond to the question. There is a need to explore the issues relating to the physical and sexual abuse in childhood as it may be a factor in the pathogenesis of substance abuse in women. More detailed sexual assessment tools and treatment directed at the sequelae of child abuse may also be in this population (AU)