Mate choice by males has been recognized at least since Darwin's time, but its phylogenetic distribution and effect on the evolution of female phenotypes remain poorly known. Moreover, the relative importance of factors thought to underlie the evolution of male mate choice (especially parental investment and mate quality variance) is still unresolved. Here I synthesize the empirical evidence an...

Several twin studies of multiple abilities and educational and socioeconomic variables suggest that a single common factor underlies the contribution of mate selection and cultural inheritance to the covariation of such measures. Theoretical analysis shows that this finding is consistent with a mechanism of mate selection in which specific abilities are merely components of a composite latent v...

Mate choice by phenotype matching, whereby individuals prefer a mate whose phenotype is similar to their own, should facilitate speciation with gene flow. This is because the genes that control mate signal (the phenotype being matched) also determine the preferred mate signal ("mate preference"). Speciation is made even easier if phenotype matching is based on a trait under divergent natural se...

Data from 33 lesbian and 54 gay male cohabiting couples were used to examine the relation between parental identification and mate selection. Theories of mate selection and parental identification are reviewed. Effects of gender and sexual orientation as they relate to parental identification and mate selection in gay male and lesbian couples also are reviewed. The results demonstrate significa...

In the Genetic Algorithm (GA) literature, many models focus on problems where each individual’s fitness is independent of others (or implicitly defined by others). In this paper, a framework is introduced for studying mate selection in the context of GA. The objective is to model interdependent fitnesses of population individuals by allowing them to search for mates. The resulting GA thus forms...

Learning in the context of mate choice can influence sexual selection and speciation. Relatively little work, however, has been conducted on the role of learning in the context of mate choice, and this topic has been mostly ignored in insects even though insects have served as a prime model system in research on sexual selection and incipient speciation. Extending recent work indicating apparen...

The use of population genetic variability in present-day selection schemes can be improved to reduce inbreeding rate and inbreeding depression without impairing genetic progress. We performed an experiment with Drosophila melanogaster to test mate selection, an optimizing method that uses linear programming to maximize the selection differential applied while at the same time respecting a restr...

Previous studies about the effects of social rejection on individuals' social behaviors have produced mixed results and tend to study mating behaviors from a static point of view. However, mate selection in essence is a dynamic process, and therefore sociometer theory opens up a new perspective for studying mating and its underlying practices. Based on this theory and using self-perceived mate ...