title: Evolutionarily stable mating decisions for sequentially searching females and the stability of reproductive isolation by assortative mating.
abstract: We consider mating strategies for females who search for males sequentially during a season of limited length. We show that the best strategy rejects a given male type if encountered before a time-threshold but accepts him after. For frequency-independent benefits, we obtain the optimal time-thresholds explicitly for both discrete and continuous distributions of males, and allow for mistakes being made in assessing the correct male type. When the benefits are indirect (genes for the offspring) and the population is under frequency-dependent ecological selection, the benefits depend on the mating strategy of other females as well. This case is particularly relevant to speciation models that seek to explore the stability of reproductive isolation by assortative mating under frequency-dependent ecological selection. We show that the indirect benefits are to be quantified by the reproductive values of couples, and describe how the evolutionarily stable time-thresholds can be found. We conclude with an example based on the Levene model, in which we analyze the evolutionarily stable assortative mating strategies and the strength of reproductive isolation provided by them.
authors: Department of Mathematics and Statistics, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 68 (Gustaf Hallstromin katu 2b), FI-00014 Helsinki, Finland; Institute of Science and Technology Austria, Am Campus 1, A-3400 Klosterneuburg, Austria. tadeas.priklopil@ist.ac.at.
authors: Tadeas
authors: T
authors: Priklopil
authors: Eva
authors: E
authors: Kisdi
authors: Mats
authors: M
authors: Gyllenberg
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D005075:Biological Evolution; D005260:Female; D008297:Male; D052586:Mating Preference, Animal; D008957:Models, Genetic; D012098:Reproduction / Q000235:genetics*; D060047:Reproductive Isolation; D012641:Selection, Genetic
keywords: Assortative mating; cost of choosiness; mistakes of assessment; optimal mate choice; reproductive isolation; sequential search