Data from: Optimizing mating encounters by sexually dimorphic movements

All organisms with sexual reproduction undergo a process of mating, which essentially involves the encounter of two individuals belonging to different sexes. During mate search, both sexes should mutually optimize their encounters, thus raising a question of how they achieve this. Here, we show that a population with sexually dimorphic movement patterns achieves the highest individual mating success under a limited lifespan. Extensive simulations found and analytical approximations corroborated the existence of conditions under which sexual dimorphism in the movement patterns (i.e. how diffusively they move) is advantageous over sexual monomorphism. Mutual searchers with limited lifespans need to balance the speed and accuracy of finding their mates, and dimorphic movements can solve this trade-off. We further demonstrate that the sexual dimorphism can evolve from an initial sexually monomorphic population. Our results emphasize the importance of considering mutual optimization in problems of random search.

所有进行有性生殖的生物均需经历交配过程，其本质为两个不同性别的个体相遇。在择偶搜寻阶段，两性均需对彼此的相遇过程进行协同优化，由此引出了它们如何达成这一目标的问题。在此我们证明，在寿命受限的条件下，具有性二态运动模式（sexually dimorphic movement patterns）的种群能够实现最高的个体交配成功率。大量模拟实验与解析近似分析均证实，当运动模式存在性二态时（即个体运动的扩散程度），相较于性单态（sexual monomorphism）种群，其具备演化优势的条件确实存在。寿命有限的相互搜寻者需要平衡寻找配偶的速度与精准度，而二态运动模式恰好可以解决这一权衡难题。我们进一步证明，性二态特征可以从初始的性单态种群中演化而来。本研究结果强调了在随机搜寻问题中考虑相互优化的重要性。