Marlene Zuk is a professor of biology at the University of Minnesota, her main research interest being behavioural ecology, the study of the evolution of behaviour. Her research centres on sexual selection and the effects of parasites on mate choice and the evolution of secondary sex characters. Marlene Zuk is the author of Sexual Selections: What we Can and Can't Learn about Sex from Animals, and Sex on Six Legs: Lessons on Life, Love and Language from the Insect World. Her latest book is Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells us About Sex, Diet and How we Live.

First broadcast on 2nd August 2013.