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Assortative mating (also called Assortative pairing) takes place when sexually reproducing organisms tend to mate with individuals that are like themselves in some respect (positive assortative mating) or dissimilar (negative assortative mating). In evolution, therefore these two types of assortative mating have the effect of reducing and expanding the range of variation, respectively, when the assorting is cued on heritable traits. Sexual reproduction is a type of reproduction that results in increasing genetic diversity of the offspring. ...
In biology and ecology, an organism (in Greek organon = instrument) is a complex adaptive system of organs that influence each other in such a way that they function as a more or less stable whole and have properties of life. ...
Mate may refer to any of the following: Mate or yerba mate is a South American herb, as well as the popular caffeinated beverage prepared therefrom. ...
A speculative phylogenetic tree of all living things, based on rRNA gene data, showing the separation of the three domains, bacteria, archaea and eukaryotes. ...
It is mirrored by selective fertilization in plants.
Assortative mating has been invoked to explain sympatric speciation. For some populations there are two different resources for which different genotypes are optimum. Intermediates between these two genotypes are less favorable. It is then favourable if the organisms can recognize mates that are optimized for the same resources as they are themselves. If mutations that make such recognition possible appear, these will be selected for. Sympatry is one of three theoretical models for the phenomenon of speciation. ...
For example, Munday et al. (2004) note the speciation of a daughter species from the parent species of coral-dwelling goby fishes that live in a small area of rare coral that the parent species shuns in the ocean around Bootless Bay in southern Papua New Guinea. The daughter species has become reproductively isolated from the parent species even though the parent species surrounds the daughter species so there is no geographic isolation. According to Munday, the speciation in the early stages would depend on assortive mating in which the evolving goby fishes would prefer to mate with other fish that preferred to spawn in the same area of rare coral.
Another example of assortative mating is when humans tend to mate with individuals who are like themselves, regarding intelligence or stature. With humans there is at least a small correlation between mates for almost any trait that has been studied.
Some things that living creatures are known to sort on:
- size
- intelligence
- parasite-related
- age
- chin morphology
References
Munday, Philip L., Lynne van Herwerden, and Christine L. Dudgeon. 2004. "Evidence for sympatric speciation by host shift in the sea." Current Biology 14 (16), pp. 1498-1504.
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