Synonyms
Definition
Mating preference for a courtship signal trait evolves as a preexisting sensory bias from a nonmating context and is then exploited by the opposite sex, increasing mating opportunities.
Introduction
An important evolutionary driver of animal signal diversity is female mate choice. Throughout the animal kingdom, mating success between the sexes is asymmetric; most females in a population procure mates while some males mate multiply and many males fail to mate at all. This asymmetry results in differential selection on male traits and influences the evolution of male courtship signals (Andersson 1994). Virtually all mating systems include some component of communication whereby receivers must be able to detect and discriminate the sender’s courtship signal. This communication is critical for female mate choice, and in particular, females must be able to recognize members of their own species. Failure to perform this...
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
References
Andersson, M. B. (1994). Sexual selection. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Basolo, A. L. (1990). Female preference predates the evolution of the sword in swordtail fish. Science, 250, 808–810.
Baugh, A. T., Ryan, M. J., Bernal, X. E., Rand, A. S., & Bee, M. A. (2016). Female túngara frogs do not experience the continuity illusion. Behavioral Neuroscience, 130, 62–74.
Bee, M. A. (2015). Treefrogs as animal models for research on auditory scene analysis and the cocktail party problem. International Journal of Psychophysiology, 95, 216–237.
Bregman, A. S. (1990). Auditory scene analysis: The perceptual organization of sound. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Capranica, R. R., & Moffat, A. J. (1983). Neurobehavioral correlates of sound communication in anurans. In Advances in vertebrate neuroethology (pp. 701–730). New York: Springer.
Christy, J. H. (1995). Mimicry, mate choice, and the sensory trap hypothesis. American Naturalist, 146, 171–181.
Cummings, M. E. (2015). The mate choice mind: Studying mate preference, aversion and social cognition in the female poeciliid brain. Animal Behaviour, 103, 249–258.
Deily, J. A., & Schul, J. (2006). Spectral selectivity during phonotaxis: A comparative study in Neoconocephalus (Orthoptera: Tettigoniidae). Journal of Experimental Biology, 209, 1757–1764.
Edwards, C. J., Alder, T. B., & Rose, G. J. (2002). Auditory midbrain neurons that count. Nature Neuroscience, 5, 934–936.
Egger, B., Klaefiger, Y., Theis, A., & Salzburger, W. (2011). A sensory bias has triggered the evolution of egg-spots in cichlid fishes. PLoS One, 6, e25601.
Endler, J. A., & Basolo, A. L. (1998). Sensory ecology, receiver biases and sexual selection. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 13, 415–420.
Farris, H. E., & Ryan, M. J. (2011). Relative comparisons of call parameters enable auditory grouping in frogs. Nature Communications, 2, 410.
Farris, H. E., Rand, A. S., & Ryan, M. J. (2002). The effects of spatially separated call components on phonotaxis in túngara frogs: Evidence for auditory grouping. Brain, Behavior and Evolution, 60, 181–188.
Fay, R. R. (1988). Hearing in vertebrates: A psychophysics databook (p. 621). Winnetka: Hill-Fay Associates.
Frederick, K., & Schul, J. (2016). Character state reconstruction of call diversity in the Neoconocephalus katydids reveals high levels of convergence. PLoS Currents 8.
Gerhardt, H. C., & Huber, F. (2002). Acoustic communication in insects and anurans: Common problems and diverse solutions. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Guilford, T., & Dawkins, M. S. (1991). Receiver psychology and the evolution of animal signals. Animal Behaviour, 42, 1–14.
Hedwig, B. G. (2016). Sequential filtering processes shape feature detection in crickets: A framework for song pattern recognition. Frontiers in Physiology, 46, 1–15.
Hofmann, H. A., Beery, A. K., Blumstein, D. T., Couzin, I. D., Earley, R. L., Hayes, L. D., Hurd, P. L., Lacey, E. A., Phelps, S. M., Solomon, N. G., & Taborsky, M. (2014). An evolutionary framework for studying mechanisms of social behavior. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 29, 581–589.
Makowicz, A. M., Tanner, J. C., Dumas, E., Siler, C. D., & Schlupp, I. (2015). Pre-existing biases for swords in mollies (Poecilia). Behavioral Ecology, 27, 175–184.
Partan, S., & Marler, P. (1999). Communication goes multimodal. Science, 283, 1272–1273.
Patricelli, G. L., Krakauer, A. H., & Taff, C. C. (2016). Variable signals in a complex world: Shifting views of within-individual variability in sexual display traits. Advances in the Study of Behaviour, 48, 319–386.
Phelps, S. M., Rand, A. S., & Ryan, M. J. (2006). A cognitive framework for mate choice and species recognition. The American Naturalist, 167(1), 28–42.
Rodd, F. H., Hughes, K. A., Grether, G. F., & Baril, C. T. (2002). A possible non-sexual origin of mate preference: Are male guppies mimicking fruit? Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 269, 475–481.
Ronald, K. L., Fernández-Juricic, E., & Lucas, J. R. (2012). Taking the sensory approach: How individual differences in sensory perception can influence mate choice. Animal Behaviour, 84, 1283–1294.
Ryan, M. J. (1985). The túngara frog: A study in sexual selection and communication. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Ryan, M. J. (1990). Sexual selection, sensory systems and sensory exploitation. Oxford Surveys in Evolutionary Biology, 7, 157–195.
Ryan, M. J., & Cummings, M. E. (2013). Perceptual biases and mate choice. Annual Review of Ecology, Evolution, and Systematics, 44, 437–459.
Schrode, K. M., Buerkle, N. P., Brittan-Powell, E. F., & Bee, M. A. (2014). Auditory brainstem responses in Cope’s gray treefrog (Hyla chrysoscelis): Effects of frequency, level, sex and size. Journal of Comparative Physiology A, 200, 221–238.
Seehausen, O., Terai, Y., Magalhaes, I. S., Carleton, K. L., Mrosso, H. D., Miyagi, R., van der Sluijs, I., Schneider, M. V., Maan, M. E., Tachida, H., & Imai, H. (2008). Speciation through sensory drive in cichlid fish. Nature, 455, 620–626.
Shaw, K. (1995). Phylogenetic tests of the sensory exploitation model of sexual selection. Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 10, 117–120.
Taylor, R. C., & Ryan, M. J. (2013). Interactions of multisensory components perceptually rescue túngara frog mating signals. Science, 341, 273–274.
ter Hofstede, H. M., Schöneich, S., Robillard, T., & Hedwig, B. (2015). Evolution of a communication system by sensory exploitation of startle behavior. Current Biology, 25, 3245–3252.
Tinghitella, R. M., & Zuk, M. (2009). Asymmetric mating preferences accommodated the rapid evolutionary loss of a sexual signal. Evolution, 63, 2087–2098.
Wilczynski, W., & Capranica, R. R. (1984). The auditory system of anuran amphibians. Progress in Neurobiology, 22, 1–38.
Wyttenbach, R. A., & Farris, H. E. (2004). Psychophysics in insect hearing. Microscopy Research and Technique, 63, 375–387.
Zuk, M., Simmons, L. W., & Cupp, L. (1993). Calling characteristics of parasitized and unparasitized populations of the field cricket Teleogryllus oceanicus. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 33, 339–343.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2016 Springer International Publishing AG
About this entry
Cite this entry
Taylor, R.C., Hunter, K.L. (2016). Sensory Exploitation Hypothesis. In: Weekes-Shackelford, V., Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_93-1
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_93-1
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Publisher Name: Springer, Cham
Online ISBN: 978-3-319-16999-6
eBook Packages: Springer Reference Behavioral Science and PsychologyReference Module Humanities and Social SciencesReference Module Business, Economics and Social Sciences