One-allele isolating mechanisms should make the evolution of reproductive isolation between potentially hybridizing taxa easier than two-allele mechanisms, but the generality of one-allele mechanisms in nature has yet to be established. A potentially important one-allele mechanism is sexual imprinting, where the mate preferences of individuals are based on the phenotype of their parents. Here I...

Sexual selection is one of the main evolutionary forces that drive signal evolution. In previous studies, we have found out that males of Pleurodema thaul, a frog with an extensive latitudinal distribution in Chile, emits advertisement calls that show remarkable variation among populations. In addition, this variation is related to intense inter-male acoustic competition (intra-sexual selection...

Despite the social importance of decisions taken in the ‘‘heat of the moment,’’ very little research has examined the effect of sexual arousal on judgment and decision making. Here we examine the effect of sexual arousal, induced by self-stimulation, on judgments and hypothetical decisions made by male college students. Students were assigned to be in either a state of sexual arousal or a neutr...

Males can produce complex sexual signals, often in different sensory modalities. The information conveyed by multiple signals, and the degree to which multiple signals interact in influencing female mating decisions, is not well understood. Male crickets produce 2 signals during courtship, an acoustic signal or courtship song, and a contact olfactory signal in the form of a blend of hydrocarbon...

The diversity of sexual traits favoured by females is enormous and, curiously, includes preferences for males with rare or novel phenotypes. We modelled the evolution of a preference for rarity that yielded two surprising results. First, a Fisherian 'sexy son' effect can boost female preferences to a frequency well above that predicted by mutation-selection balance, even if there are significan...

In human females cyclic shifts in preference have been documented for odour and physical and behavioral male traits. Women prefer the smell of dominant males, more masculine male faces and men behaving more dominantly when at peak fertility than at other times in their menstrual cycle. Here we examine variation in preferences for body sexual dimorphism. Across two studies, both between- and wit...

Females often prefer males with elaborate traits, even when they receive no direct benefits from their choice. In such situations, mate discrimination presumably has genetic advantages; selective females will produce offspring of higher genetic quality. Over time, persistent female preferences for elaborate secondary-sexual traits in males should erode genetic variance in these traits, eventual...

An individual's prior experience of sexual signals can result in variation in mate preferences, with important consequences for the course of sexual selection. We test two hypotheses about the evolution of experience-mediated plasticity in mate preferences: mating assurance and mismating avoidance. We exposed female Enchenopa binotata treehoppers (Hemiptera: Membracidae) to treatments that vari...

Examples are given of how the widespread learning processes of sexual imprinting, song learning and song preference learning may affect the evolutionary processes of sexual selection and speciation in birds. They show that sexual imprinting may occur together with perceptual biases, giving rise to preferences for mates with exaggerated traits. Sexual imprinting may also give rise to exaggeratio...

OBJECTIVES Dominance and submissiveness represent strong sexual arousal stimuli for a considerable part of population. In contrast to men's sexual dominance and women's sexual submissiveness, the opposite preferences represent an evolutionary enigma. Here, we studied prevalence and strength of particular preferences in general population by Internet-trap-method. DESIGN The subjects who clicke...