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Review
. 2009 Jun 16;106 Suppl 1(Suppl 1):10001-8.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.0901129106. Epub 2009 Jun 15.

Mate choice and sexual selection: what have we learned since Darwin?

Adam G Jones  1 , Nicholas L Ratterman
Affiliations
Review

Mate choice and sexual selection: what have we learned since Darwin?

Adam G Jones et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .

Abstract

Charles Darwin laid the foundation for all modern work on sexual selection in his seminal book The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex. In this work, Darwin fleshed out the mechanism of sexual selection, a hypothesis that he had proposed in The Origin of Species. He went well beyond a simple description of the phenomenon by providing extensive evidence and considering the far-reaching implications of the idea. Here we consider the contributions of Darwin to sexual selection with a particular eye on how far we have progressed in the last 150 years. We focus on 2 key questions in sexual selection. First, why does mate choice evolve at all? And second, what factors determine the strength of mate choice (or intensity of sexual selection) in each sex? Darwin provided partial answers to these questions, and the progress that has been made on both of these topics since his time should be seen as one of the great triumphs of modern evolutionary biology. However, a review of the literature shows that key aspects of sexual selection are still plagued by confusion and disagreement. Many of these areas are complex and will require new theory and empirical data for complete resolution. Overall, Darwin's contributions are still surprisingly relevant to the modern study of sexual selection, so students of evolutionary biology would be well advised to revisit his works. Although we have made significant progress in some areas of sexual selection research, we still have much to accomplish.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
Darwin's model of sexual selection. (A) First, males and females are variable with respect to phenotypic quality. (B) Males, which have the ornaments, move to the breeding area (large circle) before the females. (C) The highest-quality females are ready to mate sooner, so they pair with the highest-quality males. (D) Finally, the lower-quality females pair with the lower-quality males. Sexual selection occurs because the higher-quality pairs produce more offspring than the lower-quality pairs.
Fig. 2.
Fig. 2.
One possible depiction of a “reproductive ecology web” showing the relationships between important ecological factors and variables that ultimately result in a selection gradient on a sexually selected trait. This figure was inspired especially by Andersson's figure 7 (3) and Arnold and Duvall's path diagram (56). Note that our figure only deals with a single selective episode, such as a breeding season. The selection differential marked with an asterisk is the covariance between number of offspring and trait values, so the final selection differential (lowest box) takes into account the number of offspring and offspring quality. The exact locations and sizes of the effects remain subjects for future research.
Fig. 3.
Fig. 3.
One way to think about the Bateman gradient. (A and B) The “fundamental Bateman relationship” for males (A) and females (B) in a species like Drosophila melanogaster. For either sex, reproductive success will initially increase with an increasing number of mates, but both sexes will eventually reach a point at which they are limited by factors other than access to mates. This plateau could be caused by limitations imposed by time, parental care demands, gamete production, or other resources required for reproduction. (C and D) The Bateman gradient can then be conceptualized as the slope of the fundamental Bateman relationship evaluated at the population mean for mating success.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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References

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