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Unpacking mating success and testing Bateman's principles in a human population
Monique Borgerhoff Mulder1, Cody T Ross2
1University of California, Davis, Department of Anthropology, Davis, CA, USA.
Proceedings. Biological Sciences
|August 15, 2019
Summary
Human mating success, measured by partner number and duration, impacts reproductive success differently for men and women. Understanding these distinct pathways is key to sexual selection studies.
Area of Science:
- Human evolutionary biology
- Behavioral ecology
- Anthropology
Background:
- Human marriage systems feature long-term partnerships and extended parental care, unlike animal models used for Bateman's principles.
- Measuring mating success in humans is complex due to these unique partnership dynamics.
Purpose of the Study:
- To re-evaluate Bateman's principles in humans by dissecting mating success into multiple components.
- To investigate the relationship between these mating success components and reproductive success (RS) in a human population.
Main Methods:
- Utilized 20-year longitudinal marriage and reproduction data from an East African natural-fertility population.
- Analyzed various models to assess the link between components of mating success and RS.
- Differentiated mating success by number of partners, years partnered, timing, and partner quality.
Main Results:
- Accurate assessment of human reproductive behavior requires considering all facets of mating success.
- Bateman's third principle holds when mating success is measured by years married.
- Increased marriage partners enhance female RS but decrease male RS, given constant marriage duration.
Conclusions:
- Human reproductive success is optimized through distinct, sex-specific pathways.
- This nuanced approach advances the study of sexual selection by incorporating human mating system complexities.