Sexual Selection and Parental Investment
Sexual selection is an important part of parental investment. Females will not only choose males with good fitness and genes. They will search for those with high status and resources and those who indicate the interest to invest in the offspring after it’s born. This is not only relevant in the Homo sapiens but also in the animal kingdom. For instance, the alpha lion will usually be the one who copulates with most if not all the female members of the group. Large amount of resources and territory may be attractive for females because it will secure a healthy environment for their offspring, indicating reproductive success. However, this also suggests that there will be a greater variance of successful mating in males than females.
In species where both sexes invest highly in parental care, mutual choosiness is expected to arise. An example of this is seen in Crested Auklets, where parents share equal responsibility in incubating their single egg and raising the chick. In Crested Auklets both sexes are ornamented.
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Famous quotes containing the words selection, parental and/or investment:
“The books for young people say a great deal about the selection of Friends; it is because they really have nothing to say about Friends. They mean associates and confidants merely.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Indeed, there are no easy correlations between parental ideology, class or race and “successful” child development. Many children the world over have revealed a kind of toughness and plasticity that make the determined efforts of some parents to spare their children the slightest pain seem ironic.”
—Robert Coles (20th century)
“The only thing that was dispensed free to the old New Bedford whalemen was a Bible. A well-known owner of one of that city’s whaling fleets once described the Bible as the best cheap investment a shipowner could make.”
—For the State of Massachusetts, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)