Remodeling male coercion and the evolution of sexual autonomy by mate choice

Models of sexual conflict over mating, including conflict over indirect benefits of mate choice, have generally presumed that female resistance to male coercion must involve direct confrontation, which can lead to sexually antagonistic co-evolutionary arms-races. We built a quantitative model examining the largely ignored possibility that females may evolve new, additional mate preferences for new male traits that undermine male capacity to coerce. Thus, females may “remodel” the coercive capacity of the male phenotype in order to enhance their own sexual autonomy – a novel alternative mechanism by which females may avoid arms-races. We demonstrate that evolutionary “remodeling” is possible, in spite of costs to males, because females that prefer males with protective, autonomy-enhancing traits (traits correlated with lower coercion effectiveness) are likelier to gain indirect benefits of having attractive mates. Our analysis reveals new possibilities for the evolution of systems of sex..., Mathematica code for the dynamic evolutionary model and analyses presented in the main text, supplementary appendices and figures, and raw data from simulations underlying parameter-sweep figures., Wolfram Mathematica software version 10 or higher is necessary to run the code contained in the Mathematica notebooks.

针对交配过程中性冲突的模型（包括围绕配偶选择间接收益产生的冲突），通常默认雌性对雄性强制行为的抵抗必须依托直接对抗，而这一过程可能引发性拮抗协同进化军备竞赛。我们构建了定量模型，对长期被忽视的一种可能性展开探讨：雌性或许会演化出针对新型雄性性状的额外配偶偏好，以此削弱雄性的强制能力。借此，雌性可通过“重塑”雄性表型的强制能力，以提升自身的性自主权——这是雌性规避军备竞赛的一种全新替代机制。我们的研究证实，尽管该过程会给雄性带来适应性代价，但进化层面的“重塑”具备可行性：偏好具备保护性、可提升自主权性状（即与更低强制效率相关的性状）的雌性，更有可能获得拥有优质配偶的间接收益。我们的分析揭示了性冲突系统演化的全新可能……本研究附带的配套资源包括：正文中动态进化模型及分析所用的Mathematica代码（Mathematica）、补充附录与配图代码，以及支撑参数扫描类配图的模拟原始数据。运行该Mathematica笔记本中的代码，需使用Wolfram Mathematica软件（Wolfram Mathematica）10或更高版本。