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Related Concept Videos

Mate Choice01:20

Mate Choice

Mate choice—the decision about whom to mate with—is a type of natural selection, since animals must reproduce to pass down their genes. Mate choice is also called intersexual selection because the behavior occurs between the sexes.
Inclusive Fitness00:57

Inclusive Fitness

Most altruistic behavior—in which one animal helps another at a cost to themselves—occurs between relatives. Scientists think these altruistic behaviors evolved because they increase the inclusive fitness of the animal providing help.
Natural Selection and Mating Preferences01:06

Natural Selection and Mating Preferences

The principle of natural selection posits that organisms better adapted to their environment are more likely to survive and reproduce. This principle is closely intertwined with mating preferences, a key aspect of sexual selection, which evolutionary psychologists believe is driven by instincts to propagate one's genes. Such instincts significantly influence mating behaviors and preferences between genders.
Females, due to their biological roles in conception, pregnancy, and nursing, inherently...
Frequency-dependent Selection01:21

Frequency-dependent Selection

When the fitness of a trait is influenced by how common it is (i.e., its frequency) relative to different traits within a population, this is referred to as frequency-dependent selection. Frequency-dependent selection may occur between species or within a single species. This type of selection can either be positive—with more common phenotypes having higher fitness—or negative, with rarer phenotypes conferring increased fitness.
Types of Selection01:46

Types of Selection

Natural selection influences the frequencies of particular alleles and phenotypes within populations in several different ways. Primarily, natural selection can be directional, stabilizing, or disruptive. Directional selection favors one extreme trait and shifts the population towards that phenotype while selecting against individuals displaying alternate traits. Stabilizing selection favors an intermediate trait with a narrow range of variation. Deviation from the optimal phenotype towards an...
Law of Independent Assortment02:03

Law of Independent Assortment

While Mendel’s Law of Segregation states that the two alleles for one gene are separated into different gametes, a different question of how different genes are inherited remains. For example, is the gene for tall plants inherited with the gene for green peas? Mendel asked this question by experimenting with a dihybrid cross; a cross in which both parents are homozygous for two distinct traits resulting in an F1 generation that are heterozygous for both traits.

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Related Experiment Video

Updated: May 11, 2026

Using the FishSim Animation Toolchain to Investigate Fish Behavior: A Case Study on Mate-Choice Copying In Sailfin Mollies
10:50

Using the FishSim Animation Toolchain to Investigate Fish Behavior: A Case Study on Mate-Choice Copying In Sailfin Mollies

Published on: November 8, 2018

Assortative mating in animals.

Yuexin Jiang1, Daniel I Bolnick, Mark Kirkpatrick

  • 1Section of Integrative Biology, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712, USA. yjiang@utexas.edu

The American Naturalist
|May 15, 2013
PubMed
Summary
This summary is machine-generated.

Animal mating patterns show a general trend toward positive assortative mating, where similar individuals pair up. This meta-analysis of over a thousand correlations reveals a mean association of 0.28, suggesting positive assortative mating is common.

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Area of Science:

  • Evolutionary Biology
  • Behavioral Ecology
  • Quantitative Genetics

Background:

  • Assortative mating describes non-random pairing of individuals based on shared traits.
  • Understanding assortative mating is crucial for evolutionary processes like speciation.
  • Previous research has explored assortative mating, but a comprehensive meta-analysis across diverse taxa was lacking.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To quantify the typical strength and direction of assortative mating in animals.
  • To investigate variations in assortative mating across different taxonomic groups and traits.
  • To assess the prevalence of positive versus negative assortative mating.

Main Methods:

  • Conducted a meta-analysis of published correlations of assortative mating.
  • Included data from 254 animal species across five phyla.
  • Analyzed 1,116 correlations for phenotypic and genotypic traits within populations.

Main Results:

  • The mean correlation between mated pairs was 0.28, indicating a general tendency for positive assortative mating.
  • Negative assortative mating was rare, with simulations suggesting potential type I error.
  • Significant differences in assortative mating strength were observed among taxonomic groups and trait types.

Conclusions:

  • Positive assortative mating is a common phenomenon in the animal kingdom.
  • The strength and direction of assortative mating vary significantly across taxa and traits.
  • Assortative mating likely plays a role in evolutionary processes, including speciation.