Mating is a give-and-take of influence and communication between the sexes

Abstract

Reproductive interactions between males and females often involve exchanges of signals or stimulation between the sexes, as for example when male-female duetting is used in pair formation. Such exchanges may also be common during copulation. For instance, while males court the female during copulation, females often also touch the male or otherwise move in ways that seem easily perceived by the male. Such movements may offer feedback to males about how the female is reacting or going to react to his efforts. This may have important effects on the dynamics of mate choice and on its consequences for sexual selection and divergence; e.g., the feedback contained in female sexual response may allow males to adjust their behavior in adaptive ways. The presence of male displays and female preferences plus female feedback and male attentiveness may have important consequences for the patterns of assortative mating and fertilization that become established in a population. Here I highlight selected examples of various contexts in which male-female exchanges may occur, before and during copulation. My goal is to initiate a discussion about the sources of selection that may influence the evolution of female feedback to males and of male attentiveness to such feedback and to sketch out some potential consequences for the course of sexual selection.