In sociobiology and behavioural ecology, the term mating system is used to describe the ways in which animal societies are structured in relation to sexual behavior. The mating system specifies what males mate with what females under what circumstances. For organisms such as plants, that do not necessarily have males and females, mating system is used to refer to the degree to which individuals are self fertilizing or outcrossing. See plant sexuality. Sociobiology is a synthesis of scientific disciplines that explains behaviour in all species by considering the evolutionary advantages of social behaviours. ... Behavioral ecology (US spelling) or behavioural ecology (UK spelling) is the study of the ecological and evolutionary basis for animal behavior, and the roles of behavior in enabling animals to adapt to their ecological niches. ... u fuck in ua ... Outcrossing is the practice of introducing unrelated genetic material into a breeding line. ... Plant sexuality deals with the wide variety of sexual reproduction systems found across the plant kingdom. ...

The following are some of the mating systems generally recognized in animals:

• Monogamy, more usually called pair bonding: One male and one female have an exclusive mating relationship.
• Polygamy: One or more males have an exclusive relationship with one or more females. Three types are recognised:
  • Polygyny (the most common polygamous mating system in vertebrates so far studied): One male has an exclusive relationship with two or more females
  • Polyandry: One female has an exclusive relationship with two or more males
  • Polygynandry: Two or more males have an exclusive relationship with two or more females; the numbers of males and females need not be equal, and in vertebrate species studied so far, the number of males is usually less.
• Promiscuity: Any male within the social group mates with any female.

These mating relationships may or may not be associated with social relationships, in which the sexual partners stay together to become parenting partners. As the alternative term "pair bonding" implies, this is usual in monogamy. In many polyandrous systems, the males and the female stay together to rear the young. In polygynous systems where the number of females paired with each male is low, the male will often stay with one female to help rear the young, while the other females rear their young on their own. In polygynandry, each of the males may assist one female; if all adults help rear all the young, the system is more usually called "communal breeding". In highly polygynous systems, and in promiscuous systems, paternal care of young is rare, or there may be no parental care at all. Monogamy is the custom or condition of having only one mate during a period of time. ... In biology, a pair bond is the strong affinity that develops in some species between the male and female in a breeding pair. ... The term polygamy (many marriages in late Greek) is used in related ways in social anthropology and sociobiology and sociology. ... The term polygyny (neo-Greek: poly+gune Many + Wives) is used in related ways in social anthropology and sociobiology. ... Typical classes Petromyzontidae (lampreys) Placodermi - extinct Chondrichthyes (cartilaginous fish) Acanthodii - extinct Actinopterygii (ray-finned fish) Actinistia (coelacanths) Dipnoi (lungfish) Amphibia (amphibians) Reptilia (reptiles) Aves (birds) Mammalia (mammals) Vertebrata is a subphylum of chordates, specifically, those with backbones or spinal columns. ... In social anthropology and sociobiology, polyandry (Greek: poly many, andros man) means a female forming a stable sexual union with more than one male. ... Group marriage is a form of marriage in which more than one man and more than one woman form a family unit, and all members of the marriage share parental responsibility for any children arising from the marriage. ... Promiscuity is the practice of making relatively casual and indiscriminate choices. ... Cooperative breeding is a social system in which individuals help care for young that are not their own. ...

It is important to realise that these descriptions are idealised, and that the social partnerships are often easier to observe than the mating relationships. In particular:

• the relationships are rarely exclusive for all individuals in a species. DNA fingerprinting studies have shown that even in pair-bonding, matings outside the pair (extra-pair copulations) occur with fair frequency, and a significant minority of offspring result from them.
• some species show different mating systems in different circumstances, for example in different parts of their geographical range, or under different conditions of food availability
• mixtures of the simple systems described above may occur.

Virtually all the terms used to describe animal mating systems were taken over from social anthropology, where they had been devised to describe systems of marriage. This shows that human sexual behaviour is unusually flexible, since in most animal species, one mating system dominates. While there are close analogies between animal mating systems and human marriage institutions, these should not be pressed too far, because in human societies, marriages typically have to be recognised by the entire social group in some way, and there is no equivalent process in animal societies. The temptation to draw conclusions about what is "natural" for human sexual behaviour from observations of animal mating systems should be resisted: a sociobiologist observing the kinds of behaviour shown by humans in any other species would conclude that all known mating systems were natural for that species, depending on the circumstances or on individual differences. Genetic fingerprinting or DNA testing is a technique to distinguish between individuals of the same species using only samples of their DNA. Its invention by Sir Alec Jeffreys at the University of Leicester was announced in 1985. ... Cultural anthropology, also called social anthropology or socio-cultural anthropology, is one of four commonly recognized fields of anthropology, the holistic study of humanity. ... Matrimony redirects here. ...