Female fur seals show active choice for males that are heterozygous and unrelated.

Abstract excerpt

Much debate surrounds the exact rules that influence mating behaviour, and in particular the selective forces that explain the evolution of female preferences. A key example is the lek paradox, in which female choice is expected rapidly to become ineffective owing to loss of additive genetic variability for the preferred traits. Here we exploit a remarkable system in which female fur seals exert choice by moving...

Topics

• Animals
• Fathers
• Female
• Fur Seals
• Genotype
• Heredity
• Heterozygote
• Inbreeding
• Male
• Mating Preference, Animal
• Microsatellite Repeats