Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgments
- PART I INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW
- PART II MATE GUARDING
- 3 Evidence for adaptations for female extra-pair mating in humans: thoughts on current status and future directions
- 4 Predicting violence against women from men's mate-retention behaviors
- 5 Sexual coercion and forced in-pair copulation as anti-cuckoldry tactics in humans
- PART III INTRAVAGINAL TACTICS: SPERM COMPETITION AND SEMEN DISPLACEMENT
- PART IV ASSESSING PATERNITY: THE ROLE OF PATERNAL RESEMBLANCE
- Index
- References
3 - Evidence for adaptations for female extra-pair mating in humans: thoughts on current status and future directions
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Acknowledgments
- PART I INTRODUCTION AND OVERVIEW
- PART II MATE GUARDING
- 3 Evidence for adaptations for female extra-pair mating in humans: thoughts on current status and future directions
- 4 Predicting violence against women from men's mate-retention behaviors
- 5 Sexual coercion and forced in-pair copulation as anti-cuckoldry tactics in humans
- PART III INTRAVAGINAL TACTICS: SPERM COMPETITION AND SEMEN DISPLACEMENT
- PART IV ASSESSING PATERNITY: THE ROLE OF PATERNAL RESEMBLANCE
- Index
- References
Summary
Introduction
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, behavioral ecologists were first able to estimate, with good reliability, the paternity of broods in socially monogamous birds. Within a very few years, rates of paternity by social fathers had been estimated within a large number of populations. An amazing pattern emerged from these studies, one that changed fundamentally the way that behavioral ecologists viewed mating in birds. The extra-pair paternity rate – the proportion of offspring not sired by social fathers – was, on average, 10–15% (e.g. Birkhead & Møller, 1995; Petrie & Kempenaers, 1998). Though occasionally in the 1–3% range, estimated extra-pair paternity rates of at least 20% were not uncommon, and they reached 50% in a few populations. A substantial proportion of socially monogamous bird species are clearly not sexually monogamous.
From the perspective of some observers, these surprising empirical findings were the leading edge of a revolutionary “paradigm shift” in behavioral ecology currently taking place, with “the traditional concepts of the choosy, monogamous female and the coadapted gene complex increasingly giving way to the realization that sexual reproduction engenders conflicts [and] promotes polyandry …” (Zeh & Zeh, 2001). Though Trivers' (1972) parental investment theory did not explicitly claim that females in socially monogamous species should be sexually monogamous, it did emphasize the potential reproductive benefits of male multiple mating and not the reasons why females (the sex typically investing more heavily in offspring) might multiply mate. Its arguments were based on reasoning about limitations on offspring number.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Female Infidelity and Paternal UncertaintyEvolutionary Perspectives on Male Anti-Cuckoldry Tactics, pp. 37 - 57Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2006
References
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