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Definitions
An aggregation of sexually displaying males that females visit solely to appraise male displays and select mates. Females receive no resources from the males they mate with (only genes), and males do not provide parental care to offspring.
Introduction
Derived from the Swedish verb “leka” (“to play”), the word “lek” refers to an aggregation of sexually displaying males visited by receptive females for mate selection. Characterized by the lack of direct benefits obtained by females and the importance of male sexual displays in attaining matings, leks have become the prominent mating system to study sexual selection under natural conditions in the absence of confounding factors. As a result, few mating systems have received as much attention over the past 100 years as leks. Despite this sustained interest, there are still many questions regarding lek breeding that continue to attract researchers, including its relative...
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References
Beehler, B. M., & Foster, M. S. (1988). Hotshots, hotspots, and female preference in the organization of lek mating systems. The American Naturalist, 131, 203–219.
Bradbury, J. W. (1977). Lek mating behavior in the hammer-headed bat. Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie, 45, 225–255.
Bradbury, J., Gibson, R., & Tsai, I. M. (1986). Hotspots and the dispersion of leks. Animal Behaviour, 34, 1694–1709.
Fiske, P., Rintamäki, P. T., & Karvonen, E. (1998). Mating success in lekking males: A meta-analysis. Behavioral Ecology, 9, 328–338.
Gibson, R. M., Taylor, C. E., & Jefferson, D. R. (1990). Lek formation by female choice: A simulation study. Behavioral Ecology, 1, 36–42.
Hamilton, I. M., Haesler, M. P., & Taborsky, M. (2006). Predators, reproductive parasites, and the persistence of poor males on leks. Behavioral Ecology, 17, 97–107.
Höglund, J., & Alatalo, R. V. (1995). Leks. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Jiguet, F., Arroyo, B., & Bretagnolle, V. (2000). Lek mating systems: A case study in the Little Bustard Tetrax tetrax. Behavioural Processes, 51, 63–82.
Rowe, L., & Houle, D. (1996). The lek paradox and the capture of genetic variance by condition dependent traits. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B: Biological Sciences, 263, 1415–1421.
Stillman, R., & Sutherland, W. (1993). Black holes, mate retention, and the evolution of ungulate leks. Behavioral Ecology, 4, 1–6.
Toth, C. A., & Parsons, S. (2013). Is lek breeding rare in bats? Journal of Zoology, 291, 3–11.
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Toth, C. (2017). Leks and Choruses. In: Shackelford, T., Weekes-Shackelford, V. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2727-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-16999-6_2727-1
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