کد مقاله | کد نشریه | سال انتشار | مقاله انگلیسی | نسخه تمام متن |
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4502350 | 1624156 | 2014 | 7 صفحه PDF | دانلود رایگان |
We study how changing female condition during the mating season and condition-dependent search costs impact female mate choice, and what strategies a female could employ in choosing mates to maximize her own fitness. We address this problem via a stochastic dynamic programming model of mate choice. In the model, a female encounters males sequentially and must choose whether to mate or continue searching. As the female searches, her own condition changes stochastically, and she incurs condition-dependent search costs. The female attempts to maximize the quality of the offspring, which is a function of the female’s condition at mating and the quality of the male with whom she mates. The mating strategy that maximizes the female’s net expected reward is a quality threshold. We compare the optimal policy with other well-known mate choice strategies, and we use simulations to examine how well the optimal policy fares under imperfect information.
Journal: Theoretical Population Biology - Volume 96, September 2014, Pages 1–7