Synonyms
Definition
Parental investment, which occurs when parents provide costly investment that increases offspring survival, and sexual selection, which occurs when some individuals acquire more mates than others because of their traits, are highly connected. Differences in parental investment are often related to differences in sexual selection and can affect mate availability, competition, and choice. Here, we provide an overview of the link between parental investment and sexual selection.
Introduction
Parental investment (i.e., any investment by the parent in an individual offspring that increases the offspring’s chance of surviving at the cost of the parent’s ability to invest in other offspring; Trivers 1972) and sexual selection (i.e., covariation between mating success and the expression of sexually selected traits) are both major determinants of an individual’s lifetime reproductive success. By investing into...
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References
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Reyes, E., Klug, H. (2021). Parental Investment and Sexual Selection. In: Shackelford, T.K., Weekes-Shackelford, V.A. (eds) Encyclopedia of Evolutionary Psychological Science. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19650-3_1691
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-19650-3_1691
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