scholarly journals Mate choice in the face of costly competition

2003 ◽  
Vol 14 (6) ◽  
pp. 771-779 ◽  
Author(s):  
T. W. Fawcett
Keyword(s):  
E-psychologie ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 84-90
Author(s):  
Lucie Kuncová ◽  
Zuzana Štěrbová ◽  
Jan Havlíček

The aim of this report is to present the research project „Effect of parental characteristics on mate choice“ supported by the Czech Science Foundation (GA18–15168S). It is a multidisciplinary project involving not only psychological but also biological and chemical methods, contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of the studied phenomenon. The main aim of the project is to investigate whether people choose mates similar to their opposite-sex parents in the face, body odor, voice, temperament, and personality.


2009 ◽  
Vol 62 (5) ◽  
pp. 833-843 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah J. Casey ◽  
Marion Mernagh ◽  
Fiona N. Newell

Preferences for faces are thought to be the result of either general adaptations for mate selection, and thus influenced by sexual dimorphism, or mechanisms of general information processing and thus nonspecific to faces. If mate choice determines face preference then it should follow that the sex of a face should affect attractiveness judgements. To test this idea we used image morphing to generate three versions of face images: original, opposite sex, and antiface. First we established that the sex of the face was identifiable in our images. We then collected attractiveness ratings for the three face types. We found that attractiveness ratings to the original faces were correlated with, and did not differ significantly between, ratings to the opposite-sex faces. However, ratings for either the original or opposite face types were not correlated with and were significantly lower than ratings to the antifaces. Our findings failed to support the idea that attractiveness is related to sexual dimorphism in faces alone but suggest instead that other more generic factors influence preferences for all faces.


2015 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 284-293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carmen E. Lefevre ◽  
David I. Perrett

Skin colouration appears to play a pivotal part in facial attractiveness. Skin yellowness contributes to an attractive appearance and is influenced both by dietary carotenoids and by melanin. While both increased carotenoid colouration and increased melanin colouration enhance apparent health in Caucasian faces by increasing skin yellowness, it remains unclear, firstly, whether both pigments contribute to attractiveness judgements, secondly, whether one pigment is clearly preferred over the other, and thirdly, whether these effects depend on the sex of the face. Here, in three studies, we examine these questions using controlled facial stimuli transformed to be either high or low in (a) carotenoid colouration, or (b) melanin colouration. We show, firstly, that both increased carotenoid colouration and increased melanin colouration are found attractive compared to lower levels of these pigments. Secondly, we show that carotenoid colouration is consistently preferred over melanin colouration when levels of colouration are matched. In addition, we find an effect of the sex of stimuli with stronger preferences for carotenoids over melanin in female compared to male faces, irrespective of the sex of the observer. These results are interpreted as reflecting preferences for sex-typical skin colouration: men have darker skin than women and high melanization in male faces may further enhance this masculine trait, thus carotenoid colouration is not less desirable, but melanin colouration is relatively more desirable in males compared to females. Taken together, our findings provide further support for a carotenoid-linked health-signalling system that is highly important in mate choice.


1996 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-38 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cara Shillington ◽  
Paul Verrell

AbstractMale mate choice for particular "classes" of females may be devalued if chosen females are more likely to mate with multiple partners (thus precipitating sperm competition). Larger females carry greater numbers of eggs available for fertilization in the plethodontid salamander Desmognathus ochrophaeus, and are chosen by males in simultaneous mate-choice tests. We found no difference in mating frequency between 12 large females and 12 smaller females across 576 male-female encounters. Given limited published data on patterns of sperm utilization in this salamander, we conclude that male choice of more fecund partners may be advantageous even in the face of multiple mating by females and resultant sperm competition. Studies of natural populations of salamanders are required to confirm this conclusion.


2002 ◽  
Vol 50 (2) ◽  
pp. 125 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Fox ◽  
C. N. Johnson ◽  
R. Brooks ◽  
M. J. Lewis

Mate choice can result in both assortative mating and directional sexual selection, but few studies have addressed both processes simultaneously. Here we test several hypotheses regarding the possible role of female mate choice in maintaining the face-colour polymorphism of, and affecting directional sexual selection in, the Gouldian finch. These endangered Australian finches are highly sexually dimorphic and are genetically polymorphic for face colour: there are black-, red- and gold-faced individuals. First we showed that Gouldian finches tend to pair positive-assortatively by face colour morph in aviaries. In a laboratory experiment, we tested whether female mate choice is assortative by face colour. Overall, females neither preferred males of the same or of different face colour morphs as themselves. We found weak evidence for positive assortative female choice at one of the two loci involved in determining face colour. Next, we tested whether females showed frequency-dependent mate choice, and found that they preferred neither rare nor common male morphs. In order to test for directional sexual selection on males by female mate choice, we examined the correlations between male morphological traits and attractiveness to females. We found that tail pin length and bill size are correlated with male attractiveness, and may be under sexual selection. Thus, whilst female mate choice may be an important process in determining the evolution of male morphology, and potentially sexual dimorphism, it does not appear to be the primary force behind the assortative mating pattern among the face colour morphs.


2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samuel G. B. Johnson

AbstractZero-sum thinking and aversion to trade pervade our society, yet fly in the face of everyday experience and the consensus of economists. Boyer & Petersen's (B&P's) evolutionary model invokes coalitional psychology to explain these puzzling intuitions. I raise several empirical challenges to this explanation, proposing two alternative mechanisms – intuitive mercantilism (assigning value to money rather than goods) and errors in perspective-taking.


1997 ◽  
Vol 161 ◽  
pp. 203-218 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tobias C. Owen

AbstractThe clear evidence of water erosion on the surface of Mars suggests an early climate much more clement than the present one. Using a model for the origin of inner planet atmospheres by icy planetesimal impact, it is possible to reconstruct the original volatile inventory on Mars, starting from the thin atmosphere we observe today. Evidence for cometary impact can be found in the present abundances and isotope ratios of gases in the atmosphere and in SNC meteorites. If we invoke impact erosion to account for the present excess of129Xe, we predict an early inventory equivalent to at least 7.5 bars of CO2. This reservoir of volatiles is adequate to produce a substantial greenhouse effect, provided there is some small addition of SO2(volcanoes) or reduced gases (cometary impact). Thus it seems likely that conditions on early Mars were suitable for the origin of life – biogenic elements and liquid water were present at favorable conditions of pressure and temperature. Whether life began on Mars remains an open question, receiving hints of a positive answer from recent work on one of the Martian meteorites. The implications for habitable zones around other stars include the need to have rocky planets with sufficient mass to preserve atmospheres in the face of intensive early bombardment.


Author(s):  
G.J.C. Carpenter

In zirconium-hydrogen alloys, rapid cooling from an elevated temperature causes precipitation of the face-centred tetragonal (fct) phase, γZrH, in the form of needles, parallel to the close-packed <1120>zr directions (1). With low hydrogen concentrations, the hydride solvus is sufficiently low that zirconium atom diffusion cannot occur. For example, with 6 μg/g hydrogen, the solvus temperature is approximately 370 K (2), at which only the hydrogen diffuses readily. Shears are therefore necessary to produce the crystallographic transformation from hexagonal close-packed (hep) zirconium to fct hydride.The simplest mechanism for the transformation is the passage of Shockley partial dislocations having Burgers vectors (b) of the type 1/3<0110> on every second (0001)Zr plane. If the partial dislocations are in the form of loops with the same b, the crosssection of a hydride precipitate will be as shown in fig.1. A consequence of this type of transformation is that a cumulative shear, S, is produced that leads to a strain field in the surrounding zirconium matrix, as illustrated in fig.2a.


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