• how frequently an individual encounters potential partners;
• the individual’s survival probability;
• how much time elapses for the individual between one mating and the next; and
• the differences in fitness that would be conferred from mating with alternative potential mates.

Consequently, Hubbell and Johnson predicted that both choosy and indiscriminate individuals occur within each sex.

“The paper knocked my socks off,” Gowaty said. “Their model showed that individuals can be choosy or indiscriminant, depending on the environments they experience.”

Subsequently, Gowaty and Hubbell have modified this model to account for moment-to-moment adjustments that individuals — male or female — make in choosy or indiscriminate behaviors. And this model also puts forward the idea that such flexible behaviors are induced by environmental and social factors rather than determined by fixed genetic differences between the sexes.

Gowaty said she hopes their book also will have a striking effect on how other scientists think about sexual selection and evolution, particularly the extent to which breeding individuals can adjust their mate-choice behaviors in response to social and ecological conditions. “We have the impression that everything we’re going to say in the book will be controversial, at least in some circles,” she said. “And here I thought that I’d made my most important contributions very early in my scientific career and that the rest would sort of be mopping up.”

More likely, she’s just getting started.

For more information, contact Patty Gowaty at gowaty@uga.edu, Wyatt Anderson at wyatt@uga.edu or access http://www.ecology.uga.edu/people/faculty/gowaty.htm.

Judy Purdy is director of the UGA Research Communcations Office and editor of UGA Research Magazine.

EMAIL THIS     PRINTABLE VERSION