Mating Systems and StrategiesThis book presents the first unified conceptual and statistical framework for understanding the evolution of reproductive strategies. Using the concept of the opportunity for sexual selection, the authors illustrate how and why sexual selection, though restricted to one sex and opposed in the other, is one of the strongest and fastest of all evolutionary forces. They offer a statistical framework for studying mating system evolution and apply it to patterns of alternative mating strategies. In doing so, they provide a method for quantifying how the strength of sexual selection is affected by the ecological and life history processes that influence females' spatial and temporal clustering and reproductive schedules. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 60
... predict overall patterns of male and female mating behavior. In chapter 5, we explore the effects of female reproductive life history (multiple mating and multiple reproductive episodes) on the variance in offspring numbers among ...
... predictions about the occurrence of sperm competition, mate guarding, sexual dimorphism, sexual conflict, and alternative mating strategies. We illustrate our scheme using selected animal and plant taxa and we modify the nomenclature ...
... predictions concerning the kinds of mating systems that would result from different features of female reproductive ecology. For example, they predicted that polygyny, a mating system in which individual males may reproduce with more ...
... predicted that monogamy will evolve. Lastly, when resources and females are so scarce that males must form coalitions to acquire them, or when males are solely responsible for providing care of the young, polyandry, a mating system in ...
... predictions but was founded on the widespread occurrence of anisogamy, that is, the sex difference in initial parental investment in gametes that exists in most in bisexual species. Trivers (1972) argued that asymmetrical parental ...
Contents
1 | |
36 | |
3 The Phenology of Sexual Selection | 74 |
4 Multiple Matings and Postcopulatory Prezygotic Sexual Selection ... | 109 |
5 Female Life History and Sexual Selection | 128 |
6 The I Surface | 154 |
7 Conceptual Difficulties in Mating System Research ... | 169 |
8 Behavioral Influences on I | 208 |
10 A Darwinian Perspective on Alternative Mating Strategies ... | 370 |
11 Sexual Selection and Alternative Mating Strategies ... | 386 |
12 The Forms of Alternative Mating Strategies | 423 |
References | 471 |
Author Index | 517 |
Word Index | 526 |
Taxonomic Index | 530 |
9 A Classification of Mating Systems | 262 |