Long Term Mating Flashcards
What are 3 notable traits of female mate preferences?
- Signs of resources and status
- Physical features
- Signs of provisioning (offspring investment)
What is forced copulation in some species? How do certain species adapt to prevent it from occurring and why do these adaptions occur?
Forced copulation is when males forcibly mate with females in certain species. Females have developed a response to that because they want the freedom of having a CHOICE in which male they want to mate with due to parental investment and ensuring a healthy offspring.
What are some good qualities that females look for that higher age represents in males?
Age indicates access to resources and social status. The higher the age, the more access to resources and the higher/more well known the social status. Also, age indicates knowledge and experience which females look for to be passed down to their offspring. One other factor is also genetic material that age represents especially in developing countries where the average age of death is low, females look for older males because that shows that they have the better genes of survival in their environment
How are the traits that females look for in males and vice versa in terms of appearing in other cultures?
These traits are cross cultural (its not just restricted to one part of the world). However, these traits tend to disappear in places of high equality like Scandinavian countries
What are 3 signalling theories?
- parasite theory
- handicap theory
- runaway selection theory
What is the parasite theory and what role does it play in bird mating?
- Parasite theory is any type of signalling that male birds can show female birds to indicate lack of parasites or infections…etc. They can do this by showing vibrant colours (like peacocks), and ornamentation, which links to lack of parasites. This is called an ‘honest signal’ because its an honest indicator of healthy immune system functions
What is the handicap theory of physical attractions? What benefits does it show in terms of mate selection?
Handicap theory is when animals put themselves at risk of being attacked (or play on a handicap) thereby increasing their survival risk, reducing mobility and requiring tons of effort to maintain, all in order to attract mates. This shows females that the male is healthy enough to carry on a handicap because if he wasn’t healthy, he would not be able to put himself into such danger
What is runaway selection and what does it signal?
When an animal signals an adaptive trait however, that trait does not actually display itself. For example, if a mutation caused bright vibrant colours or ornamentation in birds rather than the actual trait (being parasite free) itself.
What is paternal certainty? and what does it correspond to in males?
paternal certainty is how certain a male is that the offspring is his child. If theres low paternal certainty, then the male will spend less time carrying or providing for the child, where as if theres high paternal certainty, then the male will provide for the child and invest time.
What are three ways species increase paternity certainty?
- Physically fighting off other competition or males after conception for a few weeks until its certain the female cannot get pregnant again when left alone
- Physiologically –> a plug that occurs in butterflies after they have sex so that no other butterflies can have sex with them
- Sperm competition –> sperm of different males will be poisonous to each other (one male sperm will kill off other male sperm)
What is a polygamous (polygyny) relationship? What results from it?
Polygyny occurs in species where theres high female investment in offspring and very low male investment, because males mate with large amounts of females.
- Results in larger and stronger males (providing advantage for competition) and more picky females (because they want the best genes for their baby since they’re raising it on their own)
- In polygamous relationships, males are greater in size than females
What is a monogamous mating system? What does it result in?
- Species that have both investment high in males and females have monogamous relationships, where theres equal parental investment due to the inability of only one parent to raise the offspring alone.
- Males and females are the same size because competition occurs in both sexes
What is polyandry and what results from it?
polyandry relationships are mating systems where females mate with many males and males end up being the parental investors of offspring. - Theres more competition for males and females are bigger, stronger and more aggressive than males
What is polygynandry, and what results from it?
its situations where both males and females can mate with however many members they want.
- this is one possible way to reduce competition within a species for a mate and create peace
