Evolució genètica i cultural de la tria de parella

Authors

  • Mauro Santos Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
  • Susana A. M. Varela Universidade de Lisboa

Keywords:

copying, mate choice, social learning, speciation, hybridization, evolutionary psychology, associative learning.

Abstract

Darwin suggested that female mate choice explains the evolution of exaggerated male traits, such as an extravagant plumage in birds, which could reduce the survival chances of individuals bearing them and later Fisher formalized it. But it was shown that female mate choice is also affected by cultural transmission, which can even prevail over the fixed genetic preferences. This cultural transmission of behavior is now commonly known as mate-choice copying, or mate copying, and is a widespread mating strategy in animals, from invertebrates to humans. It has been claimed that this behaviour has a significant role in evolution. This conclusion is, however, model dependent and, under some conditions, mate-choice copying can increase a population’s average fitness relative to populations without this behavior. An exciting question is to what extent mate-choice copying is a byproduct of a general associative learning process or, rather, it is a domainspecific adaptation.

Keywords: copying, mate choice, social learning, speciation, hybridization, evolutionary psychology, associative learning.

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Author Biographies

Mauro Santos, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

Departament de Genètica i de Microbiologia, Grup de Genòmica, Bioinformàtica i Biologia Evolutiva (GBBE),
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Espanya

Susana A. M. Varela, Universidade de Lisboa

cE3c — Centre for Ecology, Evolution and Environmental Changes, Faculdade de Ciências, Universidade de Lisboa, Lisboa, Portugal; 
Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência, Oeiras, Portugal; ISPA — Instituto Universitário, Lisboa, Portugal

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