Question

describe four animals’ mating strategies in your own words.

Answer 1

Animal Mating Systems

The three general mating systems inclue :

• Monogamous
• Polygamous - This includes 2 sub - types are Polgynous and Polyandrous.
• Promiscuous.

1.MONOGAMOUS - In this system, one female and one male are paired for atleast one breeding system. In some animals such as Prairie vole this association last longer, even a lifetime. One of the prominent hypothesis to explain selection for monogamous mating system is "male assistance hypothesis". In this hypothesis where male remains with the female to help guard and rear their young will have more and healthier offspring.

True monogamy also called as sexual monogamy, is where both partners mate only with each other, exceedingly rare. The most common one is social monogamy, where two individual partner together to rear their offspring, but also engage in "extra-pair copulations", or matings with other individual. Social monogamy has both advantages and disadvantages.

2.POLYGAMY - this refer to either one male mating with multiple females or one female mates with many males. As said this includes 2 sub-types.

They are - When one male Mating with multiple females called Polygyny, the female take responsibility for most of the parental care as the single male is not able of providing care to that many offspring.

Polygyny mating there are two types of systems.Harem mating structures are a type of polygynous system where certain males dominate Mating while controlling a territory with resources. In elephant seals, the alpha male dominates the mating within the group. Another type is lek system. In this system, species has a communal courting area where several males perform elaborate displays for females, and the females choose their mate from the performing males. This behaviour is observed in several bird species including the sage and the prairie chicken.

Polyandry - this is other type of polygamy, where one female mates with multiple males. Polyandry very rare because it involves sex role reversal, where females invest less in offspring while males invest more. Pipefishes, a relative of seashores exhibit polyandry where females compete for access to males. In both pipefishes and seashores, males receive the eggs from the female, fertilize them, protect them within a pouch and give birth to the offspring. Where seashores are monogamous while pipefish are Polyandrous.

3. PROMISCUOUS - mating systems occur when females mate with multiple males, and males mate with multiple females. Promiscuity generally occurs when a single male is unable to sexually monopolize a group of females, idhar because the females range more widely than the territory size of single male, so they interact with multiple males or because males and females live together in large social groups that is single male cannot monopolize.

In large social groups, often all females are sexually receptive at the same time, meaning that a single male cannot prevent other males from mating with other females while he mates with one female. Because each female mates with multiple males, paternity is never certain.

• Mating systems are influenced by competition for mates, competition for mates is influenced by mating system. Except in the case of sexual (true) monogamy, there is always competition for fertilization. What differs in different mating systems is whether the competition occurs before mating ( direct male competition) or after mating ( sperm competition).
• ​​​