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Abstract

Sexual behavior must have evolved as an efficient mechanism to propagate the species. As a property contributing to Darwinian fitness it must be one of the most critical in the life cycle, because throughout the preadult stages numbers of individuals succumb to the exigencies of their environment so that at the mature stage when reproduction takes place the minimum for the life cycle is attained. A diversity of genotypes acting on the efficiency of sexual behavior at this focal stage will no doubt exert selective differences which have considerable value in perfecting the efficiency of the sexual process. As a result, at least three major phenomena may evolve: (1) increasing fertility, or higher fitness for the population or the species, (2) increasing sexual dimorphism owing to intrasexual competition (Darwin’s sexual selection) and to preferences for mates, and (3) increasing assortative mating leading to sexual isolation and speciation (Bateman, 1948; Smith, 1958a, b; O’Donald, 1962; Manning, 1965; Caspari, 1967, for example).

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Spiess, E.B. (1970). Mating Propensity and Its Genetic Basis in Drosophila . In: Hecht, M.K., Steere, W.C. (eds) Essays in Evolution and Genetics in Honor of Theodosius Dobzhansky. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4615-9585-4_12

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