Fighting grounds

The names Jacob Ho¨glund and Rauno Atlatalo are bywords for careful and
methodical field studies in behavioural ecology. Leks (Princeton University
Press, ISBN 0 691 03727 2), a synthesis of research on these aggregations of
male animals in search of a mate, is similarly thorough. But with sex and
violence as their subject matter, the Scandinavian pair could have provided a
more colourful read.