Talk:Mate choice

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 26 September 2018 and 10 December 2018. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): Nichag16, Wikieditor1017. Peer reviewers: Wikieditor1017.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 00:42, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

This article was the subject of a Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment, between 23 January 2020 and 29 April 2020. Further details are available on the course page. Student editor(s): NovakLeon. Peer reviewers: TanishaT, Decampr.

Above undated message substituted from Template:Dashboard.wikiedu.org assignment by PrimeBOT (talk) 00:42, 18 January 2022 (UTC)

General Comments

Why are there 2 pages "Mate choice" and "Mate Choice" ??

kzyoung (talk) 01:53, 13 November 2013 (UTC)

Restructure of article

Agree with above comment.. This page would benefit from structuring it into mate choice by humans, other primates, etc, etc... Nicolehyare (talk) 09:28, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

It will also be interesting to add something about how parasite-stress will affect mate choice. Studies have suggested that people in areas with higher parasite-stress (more pathogens) are more likely to choose mates that are genetically similar to them, and people in areas with lower parasite-stress (less pathogens) are more likely to choose mates that are genetically dissimilar to them.--Psunas (talk) 22:16, 3 February 2016 (UTC)

It would be helpful to clarify the terms "Fisherian runaway" and "sexy sons", this article makes no reference as to where they come from or what they mean, making it harder to understand their relevance.Francesca alyse (talk) 00:16, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

References

Some edits

I clarified the Indirect benefits section, added a classic study on direct phenotypic benefits ("Plumage coloration is a sexually selected indicator of male quality" - Hill). I also rewrote and reworded most of Fisherian runaway and sexy sons hypothesis section.

I was going to delete the sexy sons hypothesis part from "Fisherian runaway and sexy sons hypothesis." It is my interpretation that these are different theories, and it doesn't make sense to lump them together. Do others agree?

(Ccevol2014 (talk) 00:50, 16 November 2014 (UTC)).

Mate choice in humans

Could this article benefit from exploring mate choice in humans as a section? You could then identify the social constructs that influence specifically human mate choice (social status, wealth, parental investment), as well as more biological signals (symmetry, health, age, attractiveness etc.). Whilst quite a broad topic, it could at least link to several new pages too. MattConnell94 (talk) 01:28, 4 February 2016 (UTC)

Warwick University PS364 group project - we will be adding a section on Human Mate Choice to this article with subsections about male mate choice, female mate choice and mate choice in the context of pathogen stress Loewencait (talk) 16:14, 17 November 2016 (UTC)

Warwick University PS364 group project - We have improved the introduction and added a section on male mate choice in humans. Further sections to be added on female mate choice shortly. Kroyds (talk) 16:53, 22 November 2016 (UTC)

Warwick University PS364 group project - Our new sections are mate choice in humans, parasite-stress and MHC (sections 6, 7, 8). Kroyds (talk) 19:49, 28 November 2016 (UTC)

Peer Review 1

Hi guys!

Thanks for your contribution to this article. I think the ‘human’ mate choice part is a valuable addition with very clear paragraphs and headings. Overall, I found this article to be very well structured, interesting and information-rich. While reading I have noticed a few points that I think could be improved. They are the following:

- In the second paragraph of female mate choice it is said that “experimentally” females prefer males with beards and lower-pitch voice however there is no reference to a particular study

- In the introduction you mention the 5 main mechanisms by name and at that point I didn’t realise they would be explained much later in the article so I found myself googling “sensory bias”. I wonder whether it is possible to link the words to the specific sections in mechanisms? If not perhaps mentioning that the article will detail them later?

- In the female short term mating strategy I think adding a link to the words “sexually coerce” could be very useful.

- This is a small detail but I felt the sentence explaining Genetic Benefit Hypothesis was too long and I had to read it several times to grasp each of the ‘benefits’. I suggest ‘dedicating’ one sentence per reason.

- In the first paragraph of human male mate choice I feel it is slightly unclear whether human males are the choosy sex or not. Perhaps after saying that female human provide greater parental investment a sentence could be added clarifying that this is the reason male humans are not as much the choosy sex?

I hope some of my comments are useful, they are just small details! I thought the article was very well written and clear.

Well done guys! Good luck with the rest.

AlexandraDB (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 20:25, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your comments, they're very helpful!

• I did try to create a link to 'sensory bias' in the introduction originally, but a separate page doesn't exist for this. I have added a link to 'Genetics' for genetic compatibility.
• I added in a small sentence to the male mate choice paragraph to clarify the reasons why males are not the choosy sex: "Generally, it is unusual for males within a species to be the choosy sex. There are many reasons for this."

Kroyds (talk) 22:36, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Hey,thanks so much for your comments! I've made a few changes in light of them:
The studies about women's preferences for beards and lower voices have now been cited and I've also tweaked the sentence explaining the genetic benefit hypothesis so hopefully now it's a little simpler and easier to understand.
I wasn't sure where the words 'sexually coerce' were in the female mate choice section? I read over it and couldn't see them so couldn't make a link. Loewencait (talk) 18:45, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Peer Review 2

I thought the contribution of human mate choice and relevant sub headings was very informative and well structured. Particularly:

• I like that you have included both long term and short term mating strategies for both males and females. I thought this was very interesting.
• I thought that including criticism paragraphs was very good as it provides a very balanced view.

Improvements:

• Not particularly an improvement, but I've read quite a recent study which may be helpful for you to support what you've already written as it discusses different characteristics that the different sexes prefer and found support for Buss's Sexual Strategies Theory. It also discusses how these mate choices are relatively stable (not influenced particularly by age or level of education which is something else you could add. 'Schwarz, S., & Hassebrauck, M. (2012). Sex and age differences in mate-selection preferences. Human Nature, 23(4), 447-466.'
• In the section Polygamy, I think some of the sentences don't particularly read well and just needs the addition of a couple of words for example: "correlated with polygamy"
• In the criticism section of parasite stress, there is no citation for the point John Cartwright makes.

CallamConstant (talk) 11:09, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Thanks for the comments! Didn't realise those mistakes and have changed the polygamy section - hopefully, it reads better now. R.E.Flanagan (talk) 20:46, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Peer Review 3

Hi,

First of all, I really like your article! I think it is really informative and well-devided. I like the fact that you have split into quite a few sections, because it allows the reader to have an agenda and know what to expect. I also like that you have aimed to provide equal amounts of information on both female and male mating choice. Generally, I feel like female mating choice is a lot more emphasised on, so it was useful to read about some of the characteristics of male mating choice. I have several suggestions for improvement. It seems like you could add a few more links to other wikipedia pages in the first section about female mate choice, you could link words such as "lactation". I checked and there is an existing wikipedia link for it. It seems like quite a self-explanatory term, yet as someone who doesn't have english as their first language I was not 100% sure what it meant. I would also add a reference to your second paragraph on female mate choice where you mention that women report preference for men with beards and lower voices. I was intrigued by this research and wanted to follow it up, however, there was no citation. I like that you discuss both females' short term as well as long term mating strategies, but thought it might be useful to include perhaps an introductory sentence claiming which ones are more prevalent or more typical for females? Based on research that I have read so far, it seems like, although women do often engage in short-term mating strategies it much more typical to have only long term commitments. I would also add a citation for Buss' explanation of short-term mating strategies! I really enjoyed the bit about the effect of Parasite-stress on human mate choice. I learned quite a few things. I was particularly intrigued by the "scarification" bit. You mention that tattoos have an effect on sexuality, however, you do not mention what kind of effect they have. Is it that they make a person seem more attractive, more fertile, or less so? Overall, I think you guys have done a great job! — Preceding unsigned comment added by Nhpopova (talk • contribs) 15:47, 30 November 2016 (UTC)

Thank you for your review of our article. Your comments are really helpful. To improve on my particular sections of the article (introduction and mate choice), I will add further links to other pages.

Kroyds (talk) 20:55, 03 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi, thanks for your comments! I've made a couple of changes in the female mate choice section. I've added in some links to other pages that I hadn't included previously (including 'lactation' which you mentioned). I've also tweaked the introduction to mention that women's mate choice strategies are largely long-term. I've also cited the studies on preferences for beards and lower voices, since that was mentioned by someone else as well.
Thanks again for your help! Loewencait (talk) 18:50, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi thanks for reviewing our contributions. I've added a citation to help with understanding scarifications of the human body - it's used to attract potential mates!

R.E.Flanagan (talk) 14:06, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Peer Review 4

Great work on this one. I read both the original article and your updated version, and you addressed most of the issues I had. Although, there are still a few things from the original article that I think could be changed.

In the 3rd section of the introduction, you left the word 'choosy' with a short description of the word in parenthesis. Instead, you should find a better term that either, is more scientific, is self explanatory, or has a link-able wiki page of its own. At the very least, I would either advise against the addition of 'This means' inside the parenthesis, or remove the parenthesis entirely and have the description as its own sentence. Since the first half of the sentence containing 'choosy' has a reference, I would advise finding a reference for the second half as well.

The introduction to "Mechanisms" repeats what was said in the introduction. I would advise rewording the original statement that there are 5 governing mechanisms, to something more general that doesn't mention each by name, unless you are going to add a references in the intro, or link to the information on the page.

Otherwise, here are some changes that could be made to the content you added.

The section "Short Term Mating Strategies" under "Male Mate Choice", doesn't seem to outline any actual strategies. It is quite short compared to its counterparts and offers a single reference on short term mate preferences. What are the strategies that men employ in short term mate attraction. If this is not what was intended for this section then I would suggest renaming it to "Short Term Mating Preferences".

The intro to "Male Mate Choice" starts like it is going to explain why human males tend not to be the 'choosy' sex, but doesn't actually tie the following information back into this statement. It proceeds to give a short, and unnecessary explanation of sexual reproduction, which could be replaced with a link to the wiki page instead. The sentence: "This means that females naturally provide a greater parental investment to offspring, than males." should not have a comma before 'than males'. "A male's sperm is replenished at a rate of approximately 12 million per hour, whereas a female is born with a fixed amount of egg cells which are not restocked." isn't cited and also seems out of place.

I suggest changing the sentence: "The face preference of humans has shown some correlates with both MHC-similarity and MHC-heterozygosity." to "Human facial preferences have been shown to correlate with both MHC-similarity and MHC-heterozygosity." The two sections following this are too short to have sub-titles. I would instead integrate them into the intro to the section. These sentences: "Whilst, facial asymmetry hasn't been correlated with MHC-heterozygosity, the perceived healthiness of skin appears to be.[77] It appears to be that only MHC-heterozygosity, and only MHC-heterozygosity and no other genetic markers are correlated with facial attractiveness in males." need to have commas added and/or removed in multiple places. For example 'Whilst' shouldn't have a comma after it, and seems like an odd word choice anyways. Why not just use 'while'.

Lastly, I think your contributions could do with a picture or two. The top of the page has 3 pictures, and then there are none. Pictures don't necessarily have to add content, but as long as they are related to the topic, they both add to the structure and aesthetic of a page, and give the reader something to remember the information with.

Once more, I thought your contributions to the page, including the editing of the original content, was well done and upheld Wikipedia standards. You made the introduction clearer, and improved the structure of the page. Great job!

ChaoticNeutral (talk) 17:32, 1 December 2016 (UTC)

Hi there,

Thank you for reviewing our article.

• I have made an edit to the introduction, as you suggested. However, I have kept the description of choosy as I felt this was appropriate. As this word is used in all of the literature, I do not find it suitable to change this word. I do not consider it appropriate to change the introduction section on 'Mechanisms,' as I think it provides a basic outline should the reader not want to read the rest of the article.
• I understand your points about the male mate choice section so will edit this by adding supporting research. You also pointed out a lack of citation, but my reference (no. 59) covers this section.
• I have taken out the description of sexual reproduction, and replaced this with a link to its own Wikipedia page.

Thanks for your comments!

Kroyds (talk) 22:36, 29 November 2016 (UTC)

Hi!

Thanks for taking the time to review our contributions! The facial preferences in regards to MHC-correlated have been updated accordingly!

R.E.Flanagan (talk) 13:49, 8 December 2016 (UTC)

Peer Review 5

Potential List of references

Wood Chapter 11 (Part I Marriage & Fertility) - Wood, J. W. Dynamics of human reproduction: biology, biometry, demography. (Aldine de Gruyter, 1994).

Prum Chapter 1, Chapter 8 - Prum, R. O. The evolution of beauty: how Darwin’s forgotten theory of mate choice shapes the animal world--and us.(Doubleday, 2017).

Scelza 2013 - Scelza, BA. Choosy but not chaste: multiple mating in human females. Evol. Anthropol.22,259–69 (2013).

Borgerhoff Mulder 1992 (Sections 11.3-11.4 In Chpt. 11)

Blake 2018, Borgerhoff Mulder 2018 --Dkap07 (talk) 21:20, 22 October 2018 (UTC)

Added two sources (31 and 32)--Annaaho — Preceding undated comment added 22:06, 24 May 2023 (UTC)

Does "mate choice" have any other meaning?

@HotMess: Why does this article have a disambiguation hatnote? Jarble (talk) 16:32, 13 February 2024 (UTC)

honestly I forgor 🔥HOTm̵̟͆e̷̜̓s̵̼̊s̸̜̃🔥 (talk・edits) 17:52, 13 February 2024 (UTC)