Size-Assortative Mating and Sexual Size Dimorphism are Predictable from Simple Mechanics of Mate-Grasping Behavior

[ Information ]

BMC Evolutionary Biology, vol. 10, no. 1, pp. 1-16, 2010.

[ Authors ]

Chang S. Han, Piotr G. Jablonski, Beobkyun Kim, and Frank C. Park

[ Abstract ]

A major challenge in evolutionary biology is to understand the typically complex interactions between diverse counter-balancing factors of Darwinian selection for size assortative mating and sexual size dimorphism. It appears that rarely a simple mechanism could provide a major explanation of these phenomena. Mechanics of behaviors can predict animal morphology, such like adaptations to locomotion in animals from various of taxa, but its potential to predict size-assortative mating and its evolutionary consequences has been less explored. Mate-grasping by males, using specialized adaptive morphologies of their forelegs, midlegs or even antennae wrapped around female body at specific locations, is a general mating strategy of many animals, but the contribution of the mechanics of this wide-spread behavior to the evolution of mating behavior and sexual size dimorphism has been largely ignored.