Partner preferences are expressed by many social species, including humans. They are commonly observed as selective contacts with an individual, more time spent together, and directed courtship behavior that leads to selective copulation. This review discusses the effect of conditioning on the development of heterosexual and homosexual partner preferences in rodents. Learned preferences may dev...

Experience of sexual signals can alter mate preferences and influence the course of sexual selection. Here, we examine the patterns of experience-mediated plasticity in mate preferences that can arise in response to variation in the composition of mates in the environment. We use these patterns to test hypotheses about potential sources of selection favouring experience-mediated plasticity. We ...

Phallometry is a physiological measure of sexual response widely used for the assessment of paedophilia among sexual offenders. Although many medications decrease penile response sufficiently to interfere with sexual intercourse, it is unknown to what extent such medications might interfere with phallometric testing. In the current study, we utilized a naturalistic convenience sample of 1078 me...

Expression of sexual displays is often closely linked to individual performance in a particular environment, i.e., male condition. Female preference for environmentand conditiondependent sexual displays in males evolves because of benefits of male condition to female fitness. Variation in these benefits can lead to divergence in female preferences that eventuate in speciation. To indicate condi...

The sensory bias model of sexual selection posits that female mating preferences are by-products of natural selection on sensory systems. Although sensory bias was proposed 20 years ago, its critical assumptions remain untested. This paradox arises because sensory bias has been used to explain two different phenomena. First, it has been used as a hypothesis about signal design, that is, that ma...

Although experimental studies support that men generally respond more to visual sexual stimuli than do women, there is substantial variability in this effect. One potential source of variability is the type of stimuli used that may not be of equal interest to both men and women whose preferences may be dependent upon the activities and situations depicted. The current study investigated whether...

In human voices, low fundamental frequency is thought to be a cue to masculinity and reproductive capability and large vocal tracts are associated with large body size of the speaker. Female preferences for males with low fundamental frequencies and large vocal tract lengths are potentially adaptive. Although sexually dimorphic characteristics of male voices have been studied, the impact of man...

The objective of the current study was to further examine gender differences in preferences for particular characteristics in a sexual partner and to investigate the extent to which men and women accurately estimate the preferences of the other gender. Heterosexual college students (185 men, 244 women) rated a diverse set of characteristics in a hypothetical sexual partner with whom they were p...

Major theories of sexual selection predict heritable variation in female preferences and male traits and a positive genetic correlation between preference and trait. Here we show that female Texas field crickets, Gryllus integer, have heritable genetic variation for the male calling song stimulus level that produces the greatest phonotactic response. Approximately 34% of the variation in female...

Animal models have shown that the neural bases of social attachment, sexual preference and pair bonds, depend on dopamine D2-type receptor and oxytocin activity. In addition, studies have demonstrated that cohabitation can shape partner preference via conditioning. Herein, we used rats to explore the development of learned same-sex partner preferences in adulthood as a result of cohabitation du...