Trial marriage model – female mate choice under male interference

In sexually reproducing animals, the process of mate choice by females is often mixed with the process of male-male competition. Current models of female male choice focus mainly on how females identify the higher quality of males, but neglect the effect of male-male competition on the mate choice of females. Therefore, it remains controversial what is the relative importance of two processes in forming a social bond.
We propose a new “trial marriage” model for females’ mate choice. The model assumes that females unconditionally accept any male they first encounter as their mating partner, and then conditionally switch mates to a new male of higher quality than their current partner when male-male competition occurs. This model was tested in the green weevil, Hypomeces squamosus, by exploring how females switched mates when males’ mating interference was experimentally induced.
The likelihood that females switched mates, as well as their conditional acceptance criteria of a new m...