Indirect mate choice, direct mate choice and species recognition in a bower-building cichlid fish lek

A cognitive framework for mate choice and species recognition.

Mating decisions contribute to both the fitness of individuals and the emergence of evolutionary diversity, yet little is known about their cognitive architecture. We propose a simple model that describes how preferences are translated into decisions and how seemingly disparate patterns of preference can emerge from a single perceptual process. The model proposes that females use error-prone es...

Mate choice

If you are interested in the diversity of life, you can not ignore the plethora of striking behaviors and morphologies that have been the handiwork of sexual selection. The peacock’s tail is one emblematic result, but a compendium would also include: the songs of birds, frogs, and crickets, the brilliant colors of fishes and corals, the complex odors of moths and mustelids, and the differences ...

Sex differences in mate recognition and conspecific preference in species with mutual mate choice.

Sexual isolation is often assumed to arise because choosy females recognize and reject heterospecific males as mates. Yet in taxa in which both males and females are choosy, males might also recognize and reject heterospecific females. Here, we asked about the relative contribution of the sexes to the strong sexual isolation found in limnetic-benthic species pairs of threespine sticklebacks, wh...

Mate Choice and Learning

Mate choice and genetic monogamy in a biparental, colonial fish

In socially monogamous species, in which both sexes provide essential parental care, males as well as females are expected to be choosy. Whereas hundreds of studies have examined monogamy in biparental birds, only several such studies exist in fish. We examined mate choice in the biparental, colonial cichlid fish Neolamprologus caudopunctatus in Lake Tanganyika, Zambia. We genotyped more than 3...