Abstract
Mate choice hypotheses usually focus on trait variation of chosen individuals. Recently, mate choice studies have increasingly attended to the environmental circumstances affecting variation in choosers' behavior and choosers' traits. We reviewed the literature on phenotypic plasticity in mate choice with the goal of exploring whether phenotypic plasticity can be interpreted as individual flexibility in the context of the switch point theorem, SPT (Gowaty and Hubbell 2009). We found >3000 studies; 198 were empirical studies of within‐sex phenotypic plasticity, and sixteen showed no evidence of mate choice plasticity. Most studies reported changes from choosy to indiscriminate behavior of subjects. Investigators attributed changes to one or more causes including operational sex ratio, adult sex ratio, potential reproductive rate, predation risk, disease risk, chooser's mating experience, chooser's age, chooser's condition, or chooser's resources. The studies together indicate that “choosiness” of potential mates is environmentally and socially labile, that is, induced – not fixed – in “the choosy sex” with results consistent with choosers' intrinsic characteristics or their ecological circumstances mattering more to mate choice than the traits of potential mates. We show that plasticity‐associated variables factor into the simpler SPT variables. We propose that it is time to complete the move from questions about within‐sex plasticity in the choosy sex to between‐ and within‐individual flexibility in reproductive decision‐making of both sexes simultaneously. Currently, unanswered empirical questions are about the force of alternative constraints and opportunities as inducers of individual flexibility in reproductive decision‐making, and the ecological, social, and developmental sources of similarities and differences between individuals. To make progress, we need studies (1) of simultaneous and symmetric attention to individual mate preferences and subsequent behavior in both sexes, (2) controlled for within‐individual variation in choice behavior as demography changes, and which (3) report effects on fitness from movement of individual's switch points.
Highlights
From fixed sex-typical strategies to within-sex phenotypic plasticity to between-individual flexibilityThe literature on mate choice starting with Darwin (1871) is relatively large
Ecology and Evolution published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd
We propose a conceptual transition to empirical studies of the inducers of individual flexibility with renewed interest in the real-time fitness effects of any observed flexibility
Summary
From fixed sex-typical strategies to within-sex phenotypic plasticity to between-individual flexibilityThe literature on mate choice starting with Darwin (1871) is relatively large. Almost twenty-five years ago, Hubbell and Johnson’s (1987) discrete time mating theory (hereafter H&J’s mating theory) opened the doors to tests of quantitative predictions of ecological and social constraints on individual flexibility in reproductive decisions. Their model provided analytical solutions to the expected mean and variance in lifetime mating success and, for the first time, an alternative to the parental investment hypotheses for choosy and indiscriminate behavior.
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