Variation in Preferences and Choices: General Considerations
This chapter provides an overview of variation in mating preferences, focusing on the repeatability of mate choice. Variation in mate choice and mating preferences can arise from differences within and between individuals in any of the mechanisms used to sense, perceive, and evaluate courter signals before, during, and after mating, and in the mechanisms they use to sample and choose among mates. Preferences frequently covary with traits not directly involved with mate choice. These patterns of covariation, among preferences and between preferences and other traits, may arise either from properties internal to choosers, like shared underlying mechanisms or statistically associated genetic underpinnings, or from correlations among environmental and social variables that shape preferences. These correlations represent an important constraint on the directions in which preferences can evolve.