Sexual selection and evolution of male and female choice in genetic algorithm

2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (31) ◽  
Author(s):  
M. Jalali Varnamkhasti
Author(s):  
Rachel Olzer ◽  
Rebecca L. Ehrlich ◽  
Justa L. Heinen-Kay ◽  
Jessie Tanner ◽  
Marlene Zuk

Sex and reproduction lie at the heart of studies of insect behavior. We begin by providing a brief overview of insect anatomy and physiology, followed by an introduction to the overarching themes of parental investment, sexual selection, and mating systems. We then take a sequential approach to illustrate the diversity of phenomena and concepts behind insect reproductive behavior from pre-copulatory mate signalling through copulatory sperm transfer, mating positions, and sexual conflict, to post-copulatory sperm competition, and cryptic female choice. We provide an overview of the evolutionary mechanisms driving reproductive behavior. These events are linked by the economic defendability of mates or resources, and how these are allocated in each sex. Under the framework of economic defendability, the reader can better understand how sexual antagonistic behaviors arise as the result of competing optimal fitness strategies between males and females.


Author(s):  
Abraham P. Buunk ◽  
Gert Stulp ◽  
Wilmar B. Schaufeli

AbstractThis study among 725 male and 247 female police officers from The Netherlands examined the association between self-reported height and occupational rank from the perspective of sexual selection. Male and female police officers were taller than the average population. A larger percentage of women than of men was found in the lowest ranks, but in the leadership positions, there was a similar percentage of women as of men. Overall, but especially among women, height was linearly associated with occupational rank: the taller one was, the higher one’s rank. These effects were independent of educational level and age. The implications for evolutionary theorizing from the perspective of sexual selection on the effect of tallness on status and dominance among women are discussed.


2018 ◽  
Vol 285 (1883) ◽  
pp. 20180836 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jukka Kekäläinen ◽  
Jonathan P. Evans

‘Sperm competition’—where ejaculates from two or more males compete for fertilization—and ‘cryptic female choice’—where females bias this contest to suit their reproductive interests—are now part of the everyday lexicon of sexual selection. Yet the physiological processes that underlie these post-ejaculatory episodes of sexual selection remain largely enigmatic. In this review, we focus on a range of post-ejaculatory cellular- and molecular-level processes, known to be fundamental for fertilization across most (if not all) sexually reproducing species, and point to their putative role in facilitating sexual selection at the level of the cells and gametes, called ‘gamete-mediated mate choice’ (GMMC). In this way, we collate accumulated evidence for GMMC across different mating systems, and emphasize the evolutionary significance of such non-random interactions among gametes. Our overall aim in this review is to build a more inclusive view of sexual selection by showing that mate choice often acts in more nuanced ways than has traditionally been assumed. We also aim to bridge the conceptual divide between proximal mechanisms of reproduction, and adaptive explanations for patterns of non-random sperm–egg interactions that are emerging across an increasingly diverse array of taxa.


2011 ◽  
Vol 279 (1734) ◽  
pp. 1784-1790 ◽  
Author(s):  
Suzanne H. Alonzo

Explaining the evolution of male care has proved difficult. Recent theory predicts that female promiscuity and sexual selection on males inherently disfavour male care. In sharp contrast to these expectations, male-only care is often found in species with high extra-pair paternity and striking variation in mating success, where current theory predicts female-only care. Using a model that examines the coevolution of male care, female care and female choice; I show that inter-sexual selection can drive the evolution of male care when females are able to bias mating or paternity towards parental males. Surprisingly, female choice for parental males allows male care to evolve despite low relatedness between the male and the offspring in his care. These results imply that predicting how sexual selection affects parental care evolution will require further understanding of why females, in many species, either do not prefer or cannot favour males that provide care.


Author(s):  
Patricia L.R. Brennan ◽  
Dara N. Orbach

The field of post-copulatory sexual selection investigates how female and male adaptations have evolved to influence the fertilization of eggs while optimizing fitness during and after copulation, when females mate with multiple males. When females are polyandrous (one female mates with multiple males), they may optimize their mating rate and control the outcome of mating interactions to acquire direct and indirect benefits. Polyandry may also favor the evolution of male traits that offer an advantage in post-copulatory male-male sperm competition. Sperm competition occurs when the sperm, seminal fluid, and/or genitalia of one male directly impacts the outcome of fertilization success of a rival male. When a female mates with multiple males, she may use information from a number of traits to choose who will sire her offspring. This cryptic female choice (CFC) to bias paternity can be based on behavioral, physiological, and morphological criteria (e.g., copulatory courtship, volume and/or composition of seminal fluid, shape of grasping appendages). Because male fitness interests are rarely perfectly aligned with female fitness interests, sexual conflict over mating and fertilization commonly occur during copulatory and post-copulatory interactions. Post-copulatory interactions inherently involve close associations between female and male reproductive characteristics, which in many species potentially include sperm storage and sperm movement inside the female reproductive tract, and highlight the intricate coevolution between the sexes. This coevolution is also common in genital morphology. The great diversity of genitalia among species is attributed to sexual selection. The evolution of genital attributes that allow females to maintain reproductive autonomy over paternity via cryptic female choice or that prevent male manipulation and sexual control via sexually antagonistic coevolution have been well documented. Additionally, cases where genitalia evolve through intrasexual competition are well known. Another important area of study in post-copulatory sexual selection is the examination of trade-offs between investments in pre-copulatory and post-copulatory traits, since organisms have limited energetic resources to allocate to reproduction, and securing both mating and fertilization is essential for reproductive success.


2020 ◽  
Vol 375 (1813) ◽  
pp. 20200062
Author(s):  
Leigh W. Simmons ◽  
Geoff A. Parker ◽  
David J. Hosken

Studies of the yellow dungfly in the 1960s provided one of the first quantitative demonstrations of the costs and benefits associated with male and female reproductive behaviour. These studies advanced appreciation of sexual selection as a significant evolutionary mechanism and contributed to the 1970s paradigm shift toward individual selectionist thinking. Three behaviours in particular led to the realization that sexual selection can continue during and after mating: (i) female receptivity to remating, (ii) sperm displacement and (iii) post-copulatory mate guarding. These behaviours either generate, or are adaptations to sperm competition, cryptic female choice and sexual conflict. Here we review this body of work, and its contribution to the development of post-copulatory sexual selection theory. This article is part of the theme issue ‘Fifty years of sperm competition’.


Author(s):  
Leigh W. Simmons

‘Sex roles and stereotypes’ examines the notion, implicit in many of the original ideas about sexual selection, that males and females have natural ‘roles’ with characteristic behaviour associated with each sex. It also explores further the reasons behind deviations from the ‘typical’ sex roles in mate choice and in mating competition. Are there ‘standard’ male and female roles in both humans and other animal species? One version of sex roles holds that males are generally dominant and females submissive, stemming from the way that sexual selection favours different behaviours in each sex. This could mean that sexual selection dictates particular behaviours in males and females. But in fact, sexual behaviour is extraordinarily varied in nature.


2019 ◽  
Vol 286 (1902) ◽  
pp. 20190226 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Joye ◽  
Tadeusz J. Kawecki

Resistance to pathogens is often invoked as an indirect benefit of female choice, but experimental evidence for links between father's sexual success and offspring resistance is scarce and equivocal. Two proposed mechanisms might generate such links. Under the first, heritable resistance to diverse pathogens depends on general immunocompetence; owing to shared condition dependence, male sexual traits indicate immunocompetence independently of the male's pathogen exposure. By contrast, other hypotheses (e.g. Hamilton–Zuk) assume that sexual traits only reveal heritable resistance if the males have been exposed to the pathogen. The distinction between the two mechanisms has been neglected by experimental studies. We show that Drosophila melanogaster males that are successful in mating contests (one female with two males) sire sons that are substantially more resistant to the intestinal pathogen Pseudomonas entomophila —but only if the males have themselves been exposed to the pathogen before the mating contest. By contrast, sons of males sexually successful in the absence of pathogen exposure are less resistant than sons of unsuccessful males. We detected no differences in daughters’ resistance. Thus, while sexual selection may have considerable consequences for offspring resistance, these consequences may be sex-specific. Furthermore, contrary to the ‘general immunocompetence’ hypothesis, these consequences can be positive or negative depending on the epidemiological context under which sexual selection operates.


PLoS ONE ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (7) ◽  
pp. e0219053 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anderson Kennedy Soares De-Lima ◽  
Ingrid Pinheiro Paschoaletto ◽  
Lorena de Oliveira Pinho ◽  
Piktor Benmamman ◽  
Julia Klaczko

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