User:Mvolz/Deception and mating

Deceptive mating strategies are pervasive throughout the animal kingdom. Such strategies can take the form of intersexual competition; males deceiving females, or female deceiving males; it can also take the form of intrasexual selection, males deceiving other males in order to gain mating opportunities; the most common example of this is sneaky mating via sexual mimicry, where males pretend to be female in order to avoid intrasexual conflict. It can even occur across species as a form of amensalism; orchids use sexual deception in order to lure pollinators.

Theory
Deception usually occurs in one of two major contexts; the first context is sexual competition. Mating is fundamentally adversarial; although each individual is, in principle, attempting to maximise its reproductive success, not at all matings will be successful. If mating is costly, then mating that won't result in successfully producing offspring, or only produce less successful offspring, should be avoided. Successful, non deceptive mating practices include honest signalling of both genetic quality and resources. Therefore we can expect deceptive mating practices to fake either genetic quality, resources, or both; and that strategies to avoid being deceived to evolve as well.

In a parallel, but largely separate process, some signals used in mating can be co-opted either by conspecifics or heterospecifics to increase fitness more indirectly, sometimes rather dramatically via cannabilism or predation respectively, or less dramatically in terms of attracting pollinators.

Amensalistic
In another example of aggressive mimicry, males are lured toward what seems to be a sexually receptive female, only to be eaten. For example, fireflies of the genus Photuris emit the same light signals that females of the genus Photinus emit as a mating signal. Male fireflies from several different genera are attracted to these "femmes fatales" because the predatory females can identify the male's species and emit the signal used by the female of the male's species.