Parental Investment and Reproductive Strategies

Parental investment theory has been able to explain the evolution of investments by each sex in their children, across many species. It has also proved useful in predicting intra- and inter-sexual behaviour based on the investments made by each sex. We use an ALife simulation to investigate the effect of parental investment on various reproductive strategies - consensual mating, rape and abortion. Here, we describe the environment of this simulation in detail and also report empirical results from a range of experiments. These results include clear support for the view expressed by some evolutionary psychologists that differing parental investment after rape causes sexually dimorphic behaviour. We also touch on some preliminary results on the evolutionary stability of abortion.