Female mate choice based upon male motor performance
Our goal in this essay is to review the hypothesis that females choose mates by the evaluation of male motor performance. We define motor performance as vigour, the ability to perform energetically expensive acts repeatedly, or as skill, the ability to perform difficult motor tasks well. Motor performance reflects most aspects of whole-organism performance that […]
Enigmatic ornamentation eases male reliance on courtship performance for mating success
Female preferences are frequently invoked to explain the widespread occurrence of elaborate male ornaments, yet empirical data demonstrating such preferences are sometimes equivocal or even contradictory. In the wolf spider Schizocosa stridulans, despite evidence of strong female choice, prior research has been unable to link the conspicuous sexually dimorphic foreleg ornamentation of males to their […]