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Animal Behavior 10.28.

09

If a man understands why he gets so jealous, he might step back and not pull out his gun. My hope is
people who understand that behavior

The Phenomenon of "Mating Systems"


A mating system is somewhat nebulous because it includes both population-level phenomena and
individual phenomena and is blended into a congobulation of patterns within the species. There's a lot
of differences between them and we will discuss these features.
The SOMETHING frog is an explosive breeder because they live in a dry area and when it rains, they
all find a wet spot to go breed (once a year).

Many mammals that live, especially in cold places,there are short, but seasonal breeding patterns.
There are lots and lots of birds that also have a short and seasonal mating behavior. Than you have the
species that have a periodic/episodic breeding pattern. For instance, baboons and white-footed mice
will mate either 3-4 times or 5-6 times a year so it's episodic, but not seasonal breeding pattern. Than
you have animals that breed constantly like mosquito
fish. Dispersion -

We distinguish between population sex ratio and operational sex ratios. The operational sex ratio is
typically biased because a male can copulate than find someone else and copulate again. The degree of
variance for males is affected by the mating system and is affected by how the males copulate.

Behavioral level phenomena, how many mates does an individual have in a particular breeding system?
Monogamy is when each male has one female and one female
has one male.

• # of mates is one behavioral factor


• Mate location tactics
• Reproductive competition
• Parental Care.

Males may occupy a particular spot and display to attract females or they might go out and look in the
environment. The females might stay in a particular spot so the men will have to locate them. Then
there's the degree and extent of reproductive competition, such as fighting. Than there's mate choice so
the nature of mate choice, who does the choices (mostly the females) and this is another important
aspect of mating systems. Than finally we have Parental Care. Not all animals exhibit parental care.

Monogamy is not common in any animal species except birds. The Male Blue Footed Booby only
mates with one female and it is long-term. It also implies the cooperation of Parental Care. Exclusive
sexual access and long-term social pair bond. It varies from species to species. Why are birds
monogamous? One argument is that they have external development. The female lays the eggs outside
the body because they've got to fly! When the eggs hatch for many bird species, you get a little naked,
helpless-blind bird. These are referred to as “altricial” young and they have to be taken care of. Vs.
Precocial is when the baby can take care of itself.

If you are a seasonal breeder, the male goes to the breeding grounds, sets up a territory, the female
comes and is ready to mate. The male exhibits his courtship behavior and they mate. Seasonal
breeding limits the ability of males to mate with more than one female. Environmental potential for
polygyny is lacking among animals with seasonal breeding limitations. So the combination of seasonal
breeding, altricial young, and external development is one example of monogamy. You may have a
monogamously pair-bonded mate but if you find another opportunity for mating with individuals, will
you do that? This is called Extended Pair Copulation (EPC) so if a male can find a female that will
copulate with him he will generally do that. The female might do it because the male is more fit.

Brood Parasitism:

Not all human cultures practice monogamy. But why would humans be monogamous? Human babies
are altricial. Now human women can take care of babies on their own, but biparental care is preferred.
Many human cultures are not exclusively monogamous.

Polygyny vs. Polygamy


Polgamy is the alternative to Monogamy. It has two types; Polygyny and polyandry
Polygyny – males and females have multiple partners
Polyandry – many males for one females (such as Territory Male breeding)

Animal Behavior 10.30.09

Sunfish build a little conical nest in freshwater streams. By defending a particular patch of resource, the
males can monopolize on a particular female through Resource Defense Polygyny. As breeding
becomes more compressed or seasonal, so increasing seasonality reduces environmental potential for
polygny, but increasing clumping of resources increases environmental potential for polygyny and
access to females. Smaller, younger males are not as able to defend their territories as well as the
satellite males because satellite males are able to hover over their territory. When a male amplexus the
female, the female makes a call. If it's a satellite male that amplexuses the female, the territorial male
will go and pry the satellite male off of the female or amplexuses both of them.

Mating Systems
Do humans practice polygyny?

Female elephant seals cluster together in certain locations with around 40-50 females in a spot. They
only give birth to one baby a year so they do their best to take care of their baby. The males will come
and defend a whole cluster to get access to the females. It's called Female Defense Polygyny when the
males gain access to the females through defending the cluster. The females understand that there is
safety in numbers, which is why they cluster together. The males can defend the cluster who are already
clustered together. There's extreme variance in this type of polygyny, only the alpha and a few beta
males get to mate.

Scramble Competition Polygyny is when females are only receptive to copulation a few hours each
year. Since the females are not clustered or anything, the males have to search for the females. Speed,
motivation, have greater stamina, and better spacial memory have better reproductive success in this
type of competitive polygyny. Not as great of variance; even the dumb, weak squirrels can bump into a
female to mate with.

In Arena Defense Polygyny (“lekking”), the females go out into the environment and lay their eggs
there because the females prefer a particular spot (“Hot Spot Hypothesis”), it's a symbolic territory with
no resources. The hot Shot hypothesis, it's not a particular location, but there is a male with the
necessary fitness indicators, than he is the “Hot Shot” and all the other males cluster around him so the
females must get through them to get to the Hot Shot.

Polynandry...without sexual reversal

Females mate with multiple males for material benefits (protection and resources)
Females also mate with multiple males for genetic benefits (diversity of offspring, increased likelihood
of reproductive success)

If you're a female in a monogamous, why should you engage in polyandry? Increase chances of mating
with males with highest genetic quality.

Polyandry with Sexual Reversal


The spotted sandpiper, the females are larger, more brightly-colored than the males. The females go to
the breeding territories first. The females set up territories, and defend the territories from other
females. The females court the males to copulate. The sexual roles are completely reversed. The males
take care of the young. We're not quite sure how this particular mating behavior evolved. The spotted
sandpiper is constrained to laying 4 eggs at a time so the optimal clutch size is 4. The male biased
Operational Sex Ratio means that there are more males than females. There's plenty of food and the
young are precocial so the males don't need the females to take care of the young (uniparental care).
Females store sperm so the 1st male is less likely to get jealous when a female mates with multiple
males because he knows his sperm gets stored and used as well.

Animal Behavior 11.01.09

Strobilation -

Most animals have a sexual part of the life cycle and an asexual part of the life cycle. Hydras (sea
horses) only have an asexual part. There are some animals that experience parthhenogenesis, which is
different than budding or strobilation or binary fission, which is the ability to produce unreduced
gametes (diploid eggs) and the female that produces these either lays them or gives birth to living
young and are never fertilized by males beccause they're unreduced. There are vertebrates that use
parthenogenesis. The Amazon Molly is the first example of a parthenogenic vertebrate that reproduce
this way.

Anisogamous reproduction (different size gametes) or Isogamous sexual reproduction (gametes are the
same size). Sporophyte – diploid and the Gametophyte generation – haploid. The gametophytes are
either positive or negative because they combine to form sporophyte (syngomy). The Sporophyte
undergoes meigosis to produce the gametophyte generation. The eggs and the sperm are the only
gametophyte in our life cycle, so we are sexually reproducing anisogamous sporophytes.

Males that produce sperm and females that produce eggs. There is an ecological cost of males that only
a population's females can produce offspring. What's the genetic cost to males? Females donate 100%
of their genes to offspring in asexual reproduction and males donate 50%. Sexual reproduction is the
only process that experiences meiosis. There are pieces of chromosomes that swap back and forth to
produce genetic variation. So this is an advantage of sexual populations. This leads to resistances to
disease and leads to genetic variation and this allows for adaptation. This is referred to as the frozen
niche hypothesis. Asexual populations are frozen because they don't have variation in which the species
to grow out of. Mitochondrial DNA is less subjected to variation so you can compare this type of DNA
from one population to the DNA from another population and the number of changes can show you
how long it's been since these two phylogenetically closely related species have changed.

Rootifers are unusual becomes some times of the year they produce asexually and sometimes they
produce sexually. In the winter time these rotifers are found in temperate ponds, lakes and produce
“eggs”. In the spring time the water warms up and the eggs hatch and they hatch into parthenogenetic
females which produce amictic “unreduced/haploid” gametes (no genetic variation) so they produce a
whole bunch of daughters. In the fall, day length is getting shorter, its getting colder, and winter's
coming. They reproduce sexually and produce mictic “reduced/diploid” gametes and if they don't get
fertilized, they develop into males. If you fertilize a myctic egg it becomes a zygote and it falls to the
bottom of the water, secretes a shell, and it becomes a parthenogenic female.

The Lottery Ticket Hypothesis says that the environment is changing (unpredictable) so if you have the
winning lottery ticket you're going to produce a whole bunch of daughters which allows you to reach
genetic variation. The Lottery Ticket Hypothesis does not apply to all animals.

Tangled Bank Hypothesis – based off a few sentences in the end of On the Origin of Species. Presents a
complex ramble of ecological opportunities. The environment is temporally changing and
heterogeneity. In both the biotic and abiotic environments. Those organisms that are best suited for a
certain niche will be successful.

Animal Behavior 11.4.09

Kipsigi “Neighborhoods”
Patrilineal Matrilocal

Women → Work → Wealth.

The kids do work too. The organization is matched with local because the daughter of the particular
household help the mothers with harvest. The Kipsigi Marriage system allows polygyny, but the
women must be wealthy to marry. Bride Wealth, is when a father will offer his daughter of
marriageable age to a man to start up a household. “Reproducible Age” is when they hit puberty,
around age 16. The men tend to be around 23 years old for their first marriage. If the men has a nice
wealth, he can buy wives.

The father only buys one bride for a particular son. The father of a daughter, will get multiple offers for
their daughter and so the father spends a lot of time deciding on which deal to take. The average bride
wealth in this system is 6 cows, 6 sheep or goats, and 800 shillings which is roughly $880. Marital
Distance is a factor. Plump, healthy women who developed early are worth the mots. The farther you
move the more you have to pay. Some young women are above in bride wealth, some are below. The
father of the bride exercises mate choice, and this is dependent on resources.

Resource Holding Potential is when a 23 year old male is about to be bought his first wife, he doesn't
have a lot of resources himself. But his dad is the one with the wealth which indicates how wealthy the
son should be as well. His potential to make resources is taken into account and his dad is used to help
distinguish what the son's Resource Holding Potential may be.
Characteristics women universally find more important than men
Ambition ad industriousness, favorable social status or rating, good financial prospect, and
education/intelligence

Characteristics that is always more important to men that women


Good cook or housekeeper and Good looks

Characteristics

• Eyes, Skin, Lips, and Hair indicates youth and good health in females
• Waist to hips ratio (WHR) is a good indicator for good health, age of reproductive maturity
(early), and concentration of sex hormones (higher).

End of Evolutionary Psychology!!!

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