ABSTRACT
One might think that the soil environment leaves little room for animal behaviour, but this is quite a misconception. Many soil invertebrates show intricate behaviours in relation to sexual activity, social interactions and prey capture. This chapter visits the main trends in courtship, mate selection and mating, and compare them across species in the various evolutionary lineages. A spermatophore is a coated structure containing sperm cells, which is transferred as an intact unit from male to female and releases sperm when in touch with the female gonopore, or inside the female genital tract, sometimes in a special receiving organ. Patterns of indirect sperm transfer in arthropods are discussed in two classical review papers: Schaller and Proctor. The diversity of mating and reproductive behaviours in pseudoscorpions is remarkably large. It seems like pseudoscorpions have mainly diversified in their behaviour, rather than in their ecology or morphology.
