ArticleBehavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology
The effect of individual state on the strength of mate choice in females and males.
Article in Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral Ecology. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed.
- Gut Microbiota Is Linked to Female Olfactory Preference in Giant Pandas.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2026Article
- Condition-dependent success of resource-based reproductive tactics across both sexes inBehavioral ecology and sociobiology · 2026Article
- Male Mating Preference for Larger Females Does Not Vary Among Age Classes in the Long-Lived BeetleEcology and evolution · 2025Article
- Reliability of meta-analyses in ecology and evolution: (mostly) good news from a case study on sexual signals.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Indirect evidence of an early mating advantage in wild cooperatively breeding male banded mongooses.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- The role of condition on sexual selection in the seed bugEcology and evolution · 2024Article
- Neurobiology of Pathogen Avoidance and Mate Choice: Current and Future Directions.Animals : an open access journal from MDPI · 2024Review
- No geographical differences in male mate choice in a widespread fish,Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
- The effect of individual state on the strength of mate choice in females and males.Behavioral ecology : official journal of the International Society for Behavioral EcologyArticle
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Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author.
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Abstract
Animals are thought to gain significant fitness benefits from choosing high-quality or compatible mates. However, there is large within-species variation in how choosy individuals are during mating. This may be because the costs and benefits of being choosy vary according to an individual's state. To test this, I systematically searched for published data relating the strength of animal mate choice in both sexes to individual age, attractiveness, body size, physical condition, mating status, and parasite load. I performed a meta-analysis of 108 studies and 78 animal species to quantify how the strength of mate choice varies according to individual state. In line with the predictions of sexual selection theory, I find that females are significantly choosier when they are large and have a low parasite load, thus supporting the premise that the expression of female mate choice is dependent on the costs and benefits of being choosy. However, female choice was not influenced by female age, attractiveness, physical condition, or mating status. Attractive males were significantly choosier than unattractive males, but male mate choice was not influenced by male age, body size, physical condition, mating status, or parasite load. However, this dataset was limited by a small sample size, and the overall correlation between individual state and the strength of mate choice was similar for both sexes. Nevertheless, in both males and females individual state explained only a small amount of variation in the strength of mate choice.
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