Premium
Digest: The evolution of sexual imprinting as an assortative mating mechanism *
Author(s) -
Au Kwan Lung Elroy
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
evolution
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.84
H-Index - 199
eISSN - 1558-5646
pISSN - 0014-3820
DOI - 10.1111/evo.13527
Subject(s) - assortative mating , imprinting (psychology) , biology , reproductive isolation , mating , mate choice , genomic imprinting , sexual selection , genetics , evolutionary biology , gene , population , gene expression , demography , sociology , dna methylation
In this issue, Yeh et al. (2018) investigated whether sexual imprinting could act as an assortative mating mechanism, reducing hybridization and increasing premating isolation. While they indeed find that imprinting leads to assortative mating and reduced hybridization, the strength at which imprinting evolves is usually intermediate, because it is counterbalanced by the costs of imprinting and the benefits of adaptive hybridization. Thus, while sexual imprinting can act as an assortative mating mechanism, it is often not the sole element of female mate choice.