INTRODUCTION Ever since the idea was first espoused by Darwin in his classic The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex [Darwin, 1871], the evolutionary importance of sexual selection has been documented within a multitude of species. Comparatively few studies, however, have focused on the impact of sexual selection on populations of naturally occurring hybrid animals, or hybrid zones,...

In many animals, sexual selection on male traits results from female mate choice decisions made during a sequence of courtship behaviors. We use a bower-building cichlid fish, Nyassachromis cf. microcephalus, to show how applying standard selection analysis to data on sequential female assessment provides new insights into sexual selection by mate choice. We first show that the cumulative selec...

Study of the genetic and developmental architecture of mate preferences lags behind the study of sexual ornaments. This is in part because of the challenges involved in describing mate preferences, which are expressed as a function of variation in ornaments. We used the function-valued approach to test for genetic and environmental components of variation in female mate preferences in Enchenopa...

Previous studies on sex-differentiated mate preferences have focused on univariate analyses. However, because mate selection is inherently multidimensional, a multivariate analysis more appropriately measures sex differences in mate preferences. We used the Mahalanobis distance (D) and logistic regression to investigate sex differences in mate preferences with data secured from participants res...

Previous studies on sex-differentiated mate preferences have focused on univariate analyses. However, because mate selection is inherently multidimensional, a multivariate analysis more appropriately measures sex differences in mate preferences. We used the Mahalanobis distance (D) and logistic regression to investigate sex differences in mate preferences with data secured from participants res...

This study aimed to investigate the effect of social comparison on self-perception and mate preferences. For this purpose, 225 undergraduate student participants provided their self-perception before and after evaluating descriptions of stimuli subjects specifically developed with high or low levels of physical, social and status related attributes. Participants also provided a description of t...

Explaining the maintenance of sexual reproduction remains one of the greatest challenges in biology. The theoretical oddity of sex is based on at least three advantages that asexual organisms have over sexual ones: 1Asexuals, by not producing males, have a two fold advantage over sexuals, regarding the number of reproductive individuals; 2Sexuals have an evolutionary disadvantage over asexuals,...

a r t i c l e i n f o Keywords: Intergenerational conflict Sexual selection Parental resource distribution Theoretical model Direct versus indirect benefits Mate preference evolution Arranged marriage Good parent In human societies, parents often have a strong influence on the mate choice of their offspring. Moreover, empirical studies show that conflict over mate choice between parents and off...

Recently refined evolutionary theories propose that sexual selection and reproductive conflict could be drivers of speciation. Male and female reproductive optima invariably differ because the potential reproductive rate of males almost always exceeds that of females: females are selected to maximize mate 'quality', while males can increase fitness through mate 'quantity'. A dynamic, sexually s...