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    Discuss The Relationship Between Sexual Selection and Human Reproductive Behaviour

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    Sexual selection helps explain traits like peacocks' tails that don't directly aid survival. It involves competition for mates and mate choice. In humans, females are typically more selective while males compete more. This is due to females producing fewer, larger eggs while males make many smaller sperm, making females choosier to ensure high offspring quality. Studies find females across cultures value resources in mates more, preferring older men, while males value youth and attractiveness signaling fertility, supporting links between sexual selection and human reproductive behaviors. Testicle size also provides evidence that promiscuity benefits males more than females. However, evolutionary explanations fail to fully account for behaviors like homosexuality.

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    Discuss The Relationship Between Sexual Selection and Human Reproductive Behaviour

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    GJPredator
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    Sexual selection helps explain traits like peacocks' tails that don't directly aid survival. It involves competition for mates and mate choice. In humans, females are typically more selective while males compete more. This is due to females producing fewer, larger eggs while males make many smaller sperm, making females choosier to ensure high offspring quality. Studies find females across cultures value resources in mates more, preferring older men, while males value youth and attractiveness signaling fertility, supporting links between sexual selection and human reproductive behaviors. Testicle size also provides evidence that promiscuity benefits males more than females. However, evolutionary explanations fail to fully account for behaviors like homosexuality.

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    Discuss the Relationship Between Sexual Selection and Human Reproductive Behaviour

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    Sexual selection helps explain traits like peacocks' tails that don't directly aid survival. It involves competition for mates and mate choice. In humans, females are typically more selective while males compete more. This is due to females producing fewer, larger eggs while males make many smaller sperm, making females choosier to ensure high offspring quality. Studies find females across cultures value resources in mates more, preferring older men, while males value youth and attractiveness signaling fertility, supporting links between sexual selection and human reproductive behaviors. Testicle size also provides evidence that promiscuity benefits males more than females. However, evolutionary explanations fail to fully account for behaviors like homosexuality.

    Copyright:

    Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
    Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as doc, pdf, or txt
    3K views2 pages

    Discuss The Relationship Between Sexual Selection and Human Reproductive Behaviour

    Uploaded by

    GJPredator
    Sexual selection helps explain traits like peacocks' tails that don't directly aid survival. It involves competition for mates and mate choice. In humans, females are typically more selective while males compete more. This is due to females producing fewer, larger eggs while males make many smaller sperm, making females choosier to ensure high offspring quality. Studies find females across cultures value resources in mates more, preferring older men, while males value youth and attractiveness signaling fertility, supporting links between sexual selection and human reproductive behaviors. Testicle size also provides evidence that promiscuity benefits males more than females. However, evolutionary explanations fail to fully account for behaviors like homosexuality.

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    Discuss the relationship between sexual selection and human

    reproductive behaviour

    Natural selection favours the survival of the fittest however, this explanation
    doesn’t explain characteristics that do not help survival. For example a
    peacock’s tail is detrimental to its ability to fly. Darwin therefore suggested
    sexual selection, that said that any characteristic that benefits reproductive
    success will become the norm over time as it is consistently selected.

    Sexual selection involves the competition with other members of your sex for the
    best mates to continue reproduction (intra-sexual competition) and choosing the
    best mate of the opposite sex (intersexual competition). In humans, it tends to
    be the females that are more choosy and the males that have to compete more.

    Amisogamy is a factor of sexual selection in which the gametes of males and


    females are of unequal size. In females the egg is large and appears less
    frequently therefore have to be highly selective in mate choice to ensure that
    her offspring are of the highest quality. On the other hand, the male produces
    large numbers of sperm all of which can fertilise the egg and thus pass on the
    males genes. According to evolutionary psychology, amisogamy is the key
    biological difference for human reproductive behaviour.

    According to evolutionary theory we would expect females to need a mate to be


    committed to her and her offspring and to provide resources. Buss (89) found
    evidence to support this from a cross-cultural questionnaire in which he found
    that across cultures females viewed financial status to be twice important as
    men, as. Females in every culture preferred older men which supports the
    evolutionary theory that females require investment. This also explains
    differences in parental investment desires.

    On the contrary, Buss found that men valued youth and physical attractiveness
    as more important as these signify fertility. This evidence supports the link
    between sexual selection and human reproductive behaviour, as males need
    fertile females in order to maximise their reproductive success.

    Gender differences in human reproductive behaviour such as mating preference


    are also affected to a degree by sexual selection. Evolutionary theory would
    suggest that females prefer monogamy (1 male to help bring up her offspring)
    whereas males would be suited to polygamy (multiple copulations to increase
    reproductive success).

    Evidence to support the mating systems used by humans in reproductive


    behaviour can be seen in short’s sperm competition theory, in which males with
    more competition for example chimpanzees, had larger testicles so that more
    gametes could be produced in a promiscuous mating. Bellis & Baker (1995)
    found that medium human testicle size shows that promiscuity and polygamy
    suit males, which supports the evolutionary theory for the relationship between
    sexual selection and human reproductive behaviour.
    Explanations into evolutionary theory explain the relationship between natural
    selection and reproductive behaviour but fail to explain gay relationships without
    the ability to have children.

    In conclusion there is a relationship between natural selection and reproductive


    behaviour but evolution explanations are over simplified.

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