Tactics to Solve Adaptive Problems of Sperm Competition

Definition

The ways in which males strategize to maximize their reproductive fitness in a competitive mating context.

Introduction

Males of all sexually reproducing species compete among one another for paternity. For most males in such species, insemination is usually the end point in the reproductive process; most males do not provision and/or care for their offspring.

Paternal Assurance Tactics

However, in species where the offspring are particularly helpless at birth and require protection and provisioning from both parents (which includes some tree nesting birds and a few primates) the possibility of being cuckolded (i.e., duped into caring for offspring sired by other males) adds to the costs of nonpaternity. Human’s anchor this latter dimension. Human infants are more helpless at birth and remain parent dependent for longer periods of time than those of any other species. As a consequence, evolution has operated to produce an ensemble of paternal assurance tactics among human...