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This paper assesses the effects of the community sex ratio on black family formation and family structure in nonmetropolitan parishes in Louisiana. As predicted, the sex ratio if found to have strong positive effects on marriage prevalence for black women, the prevalence of husband and wife families for black families, and the percentage of black children residing in husband and wife families and strong negative effects on the nonmarital fertility ratio for black women. Thus, we conclude that the sex ratio hypothesis should be given greater prominence in discussions of changes in black family structure and that sex ratio effects should be taken into account when framing policies aimed at ameliorating social problems attendant to high relative incidence of nonmarital births and single-parent, female-headed families with young children (e.g., poverty). We also note that, while the literature overwhelmingly concentrates on black family structure in urban areas, changes in the black family are equally pronounced in nonmetropolitan areas suggesting that explanations emphasizing the dynamics of urban ghettos may be too narrow.

The influence of mating practices on genetic structure has been an area of great interest for anthropologists. In this paper, the techniques of potential mates analysis are employed to explore the mating patterns observed among the Jirels, a tribal population of eastern Nepal. Genealogical, anthropometric, dermatoglyphic, and demographic data for members of seven Jirel villages are used. Potential mate pools for a sample of 268 females are enumerated by village. Age structure and the Jirel restriction against clan endogamy are found to severely limit the number of males who are potential mates for a given female. The mating structure of the population is illuminated by statistical analysis of the characteristics of 160 actual mate pairs and all corresponding potential mate pairs. Using this approach several general mate choice practices were verified: 1) biological kin tend to be avoided as mates, 2) members of the same clan are excluded as potential mates, 3) mate exchange between clans is nonrandom, 4) individuals similar in age tend to be selected as mates, and 5) mates are drawn from the natal village more often than random expectation. A multivariate phenotypic distance measure between individuals did not reveal any evidence for assortative mating for either anthropometric or dermatoglyphic characters.

A series of log-linear models predicting the exchange marital mobility experiences of Irish wives are presented. For the Irish Republic, the best explanatory model is one in which the relationship between a husband's occupational status and that of his father-in-law remains homogeneous across age levels. Women show a marked propensity to marry husbands at a similar occcupational status as that of their fathers and long-range upward or downward mobility across the manual/non-manual divide is unlikely. This tendency towards endogamy is particularly pronounced within the two upper non-manual categories and the manual strata generally. The same general model of homogeneous associaation holds for Northern Ireland across age levels and religious affiliation. In the North, however, more short-range mobility occurs, particularly between the two upper non-manual groups. Despite this, the norm for both the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland is marital immobility rather than marital mobility with no evidence of a fundamental trend towards, increased marital mobility. Furthermore, the mobility through marriage that did occur does not result in an overall net advantage for women.

A significant correlation is found between the size of initial ring base and the final nest in the penduline tit. Female nest choice and desertion are based on nest size. Correlation between the number of pair-days and the number of eggs laid is not supported. Data supporting these beliefs is presented.

The data obtained for female mate preferences of the banded demoiselle (Calopteryx splendens) that indicated the role for learning in population divergence and species recognition is presented. Learning is observed to cause pronounced population divergence in mate preferences between weakly genetically differentiated populations and results in a highly divergent pattern of species recognition at a small geographic scale.

Although arranged marriage has survived in India, the custom is increasingly challenged by the current influx of new commodities, media, and ideas. Interviews with 15 male and 15 female unmarried professionals, age 22 to 29, in Vadodara, Gujarat, showed that educated youth have moved beyond the conventional love-versus-arranged marriage dichotomy. They instead focus on achieving specific goals: intimacy, equality, and personal choice, along with supernatural support, growing into love, and brides joining husbands' families. To achieve these aims, they use both systems: separately, simultaneously, and in creative combinations. The theories of Arjun Appadurai explain that as the Western-inspired ideoscape of romantic love encounters Indian family values, Indian upper-middle-class youth respond by generating hybrid goals and systems of mate selection. They have linked imagination to hope and are using voice within their families to win the recognition, and often the partners, they seek.

A study investigates how a future expected range expansion of a damselfly species Calopteryx splendens into the allopatric zone of closely related C. virgo species would affect their premating isolation, by simulating the expected secondary contact between C. splendens females with C. virgo males. Results indicate that allopatric C. virgo males may have partially lost their ability to distinguish between heterospecific females.

The rates of spread of different mating preferences that reflect preferences for adaptation, male condition and reinforcement are compared. The results have shown that female preferences based on population-specific markers alone have always spread faster than female preferences based only on a single local adaptation locus and female preferences based on total male condition has achieved high rates.

The evolution of assortment is considered in the context of local adaptation and the studies have shown that it is a typical situation in which both inbreeding and outbreeding effects have acted simultaneously to shape the degree of selfing or assortative mating. The selection on a modifier of mating is partitioned into a transmission advantage, an association to heterozygosity and an association to beneficial alleles, so that random mating has evolved even with strong local adaptation.

A haploid population genetic model is developed and employed to explain the mechanisms involved in the evolution of mate-choice imprinting, the determination of mating preferences at a very early age. The imprinting set and the phenogenotypic disequilibrium are shown to be the two major factors that affect the imprinting strategies.

A study is done to determine the contribution that direct and indirect selection place on male versus female preferences for traits that increase viability. Results reveal that direct selection against male preferences predominates in the male mate choice model.

The effects of color of the bower and male plumage on female great bowerbird's mate selection are analyzed.

The effects of phenotypic traits, such as eyespan, on fertility of stalk-eyed fly, Cyrtodiopsis dalmanni, are presented.

Mate relatedness is studied in a Hawaiian population of great frigatebirds with the expectation, based on frigatebird ecology, that mate pairs were unlikely to be more genetically similar than a random draw of adults from the breeding population. Paired analysis was used to compare the DNA fingerprint similarity of a female and her mate versus the same female and a random male that was breeding elsewhere on the same island.

The mate preferences are mainly cued on visual, vocal and chemical cues that reveal health including developmental health. It is concluded that it is not the standards that show evidence of convergence- it is the rules or how we construct beauty ideals that have universalities across cultures

A theoretical model suggests that the cause of female-driven extra-pair mating lies in the spreading of male interests among neighbouring families, creating powerful incentives for male cooperation and concomitant benefits [...]

Abstract An important hypothesis about why people generally interact with people who are socially or culturally similar to themselves is that the opportunities they have to meet similar others are [...]

Natural selection on mate recognition may often contribute to speciation, resulting in reproductive character displacement. Field populations of Drosophila serrata display reproductive character displacement in cuticular hydrocarbons when sympatric with Drosophila birchii. We exposed field sympatric and allopatric populations of D. serrata to experimental sympatry with D. birchii for nine generations. Cuticular hydrocarbons of field allopatric D. serrata populations evolved to resemble the field sympatric populations, whereas field sympatric D. serrata populations remained unchanged. Our experiment indicates that natural selection on mate recognition resulted in the field pattern of reproductive character displacement., A direct role for natural selection in the generation of reproductive isolation during speciation is highly controversial (1-6). Natural selection may rapidly increase divergence in mate recognition between sympatric populations [...]

The several linked polymorphic genes of the MHC, which has been proposed as a prime determinant of sensed genetic individuality within species, is known to operate in mice by olfactory recognition in aspects of reproductive behavior that concern mate selection, thereby favoring outbreeding and heterozygosity, and also concern the maintenance of pregnancy. A single base-change can alter an individual MHC odortype, and the potential range of combinatorial MHC-determined odortypes is clearly vast. Following our findings that newborn mice already express their MHC odortype (which is detectable at 9 days of gestational age), we sought to determine whether MHC is involved in behavioral aspects of early development, such as rearing. In the studies presented herein, we report the ability and proclivity of mothers to recognize and preferentially retrieve syngeneic (genetically identical) pups from other pups differing only for MHC. Reciprocally, we report the ability of pups to recognize their familial environment, regardless of whether they had been nursed by their biological mothers or by foster mothers. Early learning experiences of the MHC environment are apparently a key element in survival, assuring maternal protection and promoting outbreeding.

When high-quality conspecifics resemble heterospecifics, females may be unable to engage effectively in both species recognition and mate-quality recognition. Consequently, females engaging primarily in mate-quality recognition risk heterospecific matings and females engaging primarily in species recognition risk matings with low quality mates. I examined the evolutionary consequences of this conflict between species and mate-quality recognition in spadefoot toads. I compared mate preferences and the fitness consequences of these preferences in spadefoot toad populations that did and did not overlap with congeners. In non-overlapping populations, females preferred an extreme call character resembling that possessed by heterospecifics, and they had more eggs fertilized. In overlapping populations, females preferred those call characteristics that were closest to the norm for their population, and they did not benefit from mate choice. Thus, female spadefoots appear to trade-off species and mate-quality recognition, such that those co-occurring with heterospecifics forego benefits of high-quality matings to ensure conspecific matings.

Henderson, V.R., Hennessy, M., Barrett, W., et al. (2005). When risky is attractive: sensation seeking and romantic partner selection. Personality and Individual Differences, 38, 311-325. Henderson et al., begin their [...]

Monogamy is extremely rare. Of the 4,000 or so mammalian species, only a few percent are monogamous. What makes this tiny minority stay attached to one mate? Investigators are coming [...]

Do birds of a feather flock together or do opposites attract? Do we marry someone who reinforces our strengths and who shares our weakenesses or do we marry someone who strengths, weaknesses, and needs are complementary to our own? Investigations into this question have established two facts. The first fact is that most people have a strong conviction that opposites do attract, that we want and choose someone complementary. The second fact, however, is that most data show that we in fact choose someone similar. A possible resolution is offered by the hypothesis that on some dimensions at least we want someone rather similar to ourselves but still just different enough to create a comfortable contrast in the correct direction. One might call this idea the contrast hypothesis or contrast model of mate indeed selection. Preferences in regard to height fit this hypothesis to some degree at least and indeed a contemplation of height preferences inspired the notion in the first place. The present article uses simulated height-preference data to present the model and to illustrate statistical techniques to test for the predicted outcomes.

It is hypothesized that social bonding in early life canalizes attachment behavior in childhood and, later, incest avoidance and preferential altruism (kin selection. This process--here called familial bonding--is further hypothesized to represent a form of social attraction that is evolutionarily and ontogenetically distinct from (and opposed to) sexual attraction.