Definition
Romantic or sexual partner selection by women; characteristics that guide female choice of their romantic or sexual partners.
Introduction
Parental investment theory (Trivers 1972) states that male and female have different court behaviors because of the amount each sex invests in offspring. In general, females invest more energy and time in them. This investment becomes even clearer in mammals since gestation and breastfeeding are mandatory for descendants’ survival. Because of the energy spent by females, they are limited to a certain number of children they can have and raise. This number depends on several factors such as length of gestation, necessity of taking care of children after birth, and available resources. Thus, females are considered the limiting sex, investing more in parenting effort, while males are known as the competitor sex. For men, greater access to females means a higher...
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References
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Mafra, A.L. (2019). Female Mate Choice (Intersexual Selection). In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3575-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_3575-1
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