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Behavioral Ecology Advance Access published online on June 4, 2009
Behavioral Ecology, doi:10.1093/beheco/arp073
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© The Author 2009. Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

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Mate choice copying and mate quality bias: different processes, different species

Antonios Vakirtzis and S. Craig Roberts

School of Biological Sciences, Crown Street, University of Liverpool, L69 7BX Liverpool, UK

Address correspondence to S.C. Roberts. E-mail: craig.roberts{at}liverpool.ac.uk.


  Abstract

Mate choice copying is the most studied type of nonindependent mate choice, in which the probability of a male being chosen by a female increases if he has previously been chosen by other females and decreases if he has been rejected. Recent studies suggest that what can sometimes influence females is not so much a male's success at securing mates but the quality of the females that choose him. Here, we show that, though hitherto described as mate choice copying, this type of nonindependent mate choice is characterized by distinct evolutionary dynamics and ecological requirements, will have usually evolved in different species, and must therefore be urgently distinguished from mate choice copying. The term mate quality bias is suggested as an appropriate description of this phenomenon.

Key words: evolutionary psychology, mate choice, mating skew, serial monogamy.

Received 13 March 2009; revised 30 April 2009; accepted 3 May 2009.


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Mate choice copying and mate quality bias: are they different processes?
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