How to Pick the Right One: Investigating Tradeoffs among Female Mate Choice Strategies in Treefrogs

Two main theories of female mate choice, that females either pick the best from the n closest males (best-of-n) or the closest with some minimum quality (min-threshold), make different behavioral predictions in some cases, yet both are supported by biological data. We present a computational agent-based model that is well-suited for investigating the differences between the two strategies for the biological model organism Hyla versicolor (“gray treefrog”). We show, based on results from systematic simulation studies, that min-threshold overall is the dominant strategy, even though best-of-n has some areas in parameter space where it dominates min-threshold.