title: Assortative Mating: Encounter-Network Topology and the Evolution of Attractiveness.
abstract: We model a social-encounter network where linked nodes match for reproduction in a manner depending probabilistically on each node's attractiveness. The developed model reveals that increasing either the network's mean degree or the "choosiness" exercised during pair formation increases the strength of positive assortative mating. That is, we note that attractiveness is correlated among mated nodes. Their total number also increases with mean degree and selectivity during pair formation. By iterating over the model's mapping of parents onto offspring across generations, we study the evolution of attractiveness. Selection mediated by exclusion from reproduction increases mean attractiveness, but is rapidly balanced by skew in the offspring distribution of highly attractive mated pairs.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th Street, Troy, NY, 12180-3590, USA.|Network Science and Technology Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th Street, Troy, NY, 12180-3590, USA.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Dipple
authors.affiliation: College of Computer and Information Science, Southwest University, Chongqing, 400715, P. R. China.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Jia
authors.affiliation: Department of Biological Sciences, University at Albany, Albany, NY, 12222, USA.
authors.forename: T
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Caraco
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, Applied Physics, and Astronomy, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th Street, Troy, NY, 12180-3590, USA.|Network Science and Technology Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th Street, Troy, NY, 12180-3590, USA.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Korniss
authors.affiliation: Network Science and Technology Center, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th Street, Troy, NY, 12180-3590, USA.|Department of Computer Science, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 110 8th Street, Troy, NY, 12180-3590, USA.|Wroclaw University of Science and Technology, 50-370, Wroclaw, Poland.
authors.forename: B K
authors.initials: BK
authors.lastname: Szymanski