Hanna Kokko

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..This divergence is prevented, and mutual mate choice maintained, if synergistic benefits of biparental care render parental investment both high and not too different in the two sexes...

..Costly female choice can be maintained with or without higher offspring survival...

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..The evolution of female choice may therefore have a self-limiting nature when it poses a selection pressure on male resource acquisition...

..In this way, a sexually transmitted disease can stabilize the populationwide proportion of females that mate with the most attractive males or that seek extrapair copulations...

..This creates a link from the evolution of sexual reproduction to that of prudent predation...

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..However, the evolutionary stability of this prediction is dependent upon the level of error made by females when allocating resources to either signal or fecundity...

..Overall, our model indicates that various forms of heterozygote-favouring (or variable) female choice pose a problem for the theory of sexual ornamentation based on indirect benefits, rather than a solution...

..5. We also show that the effects of sex ratio biases are much stronger than those of EPY production, explore the evidence for sex ratio biases and extra-pair paternity in migratory species and suggest future research directions...

..If females lack such plasticity, however, population-wide reproductive output may be severely reduced, whereas sexual selection on male traits remains strong...

..Territoriality has often been found to increase population stability, but this may come at a cost of reduced equilibrium densities...

..It is recommended that models specify the mechanisms by which individuals can adjust their behaviour to that of others, and pay attention to changes that occur in evolutionary versus behavioural time...

..Instead, it is necessary to consider the inclusive fitness effect of provisioning, which is determined by a combination of relatedness, reproductive value, and the reproductive value of the offspring...

..Finally, we suggest potentially fruitful directions for future theoretical and empirical research...

..Because female clutch size decisions are much more closely linked to population dynamics than male life-history traits, plastic responses to mate-finding limitations may be an underappreciated force in population dynamics...

..In most species one sex is more reluctant to mate than the other. Standard explanations invoking potential reproductive rates have shortcomings that are illustrated by a new study of eager female and reluctant male antelopes...

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..A central open question, however, is how often biological systems are able to resolve these scenarios rather than drive themselves extinct through individual-level selection favouring self-interested behaviours...

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..We also list encouraging examples where empiricists have shown feasible ways of addressing the question, ranging from advanced data analysis to experiments and comparative analyses of phylogenetic data...

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..The sex-specific cost hypothesis predicts the opposite pattern of female searching in high-density conditions, and it potentially applies to some species in which sperm limitation is unlikely...

..The observed pattern can be predicted, assuming specifically shaped seasonal increases in condition across individuals...

..The method is, however, easily extendible to other cases. An example illustrates that the sexy son phenomenon can occur when there is phenotypic inheritance of the male trait...

..The relationship between an individual's competitive ability and its timing of resource acquisition can also be nonlinear if takeovers are moderately common; if this is the case, then males of intermediate size guard the longest...

..We discuss four different solutions to this enigma, and suggest that inbreeding tolerance, where it is found, should not always be attributed to a simple constraint that has prevented finding any other mate...

..Their study reveals surprising parallels between sexual conflict and the tragedy of the commons, where selfish competition over females destroys the very resource (i.e. the females) over which the males are fighting...

..This suggests that the presence of cheaters and cheater species in many mutualisms is central to the maintenance of partner choice and, paradoxically, cooperation itself...

..The egg-laying and survival patterns are in line with the predictions, supporting the hypothesis that multiple mating in M. cinxia presents a rare case of within-generation bet hedging...

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