Abstract IBN9404709 Dugatkin One central question in the study of animal behavior is how individuals choose their mates. Much of the work surrounding this question focuses on how females choose their mates, and these studies have often assumed that the rules females use to pick mates are under some sort of genetic control. Evidence is now mounting, however, that social and cultural factors, such as imitation, may also have considerable effects on a female animal's decision with whom to mate. Some of the strongest evidence for female mate copying comes from this laboratory on the guppy, Poecilia reticulata. While this work has demonstrated that female guppies copy each other's choice of mates, many of the most fundamental and conceptually intriguing questions on imitation and mate choice have yet to be investigated experimentally, in this system or any other. Dr. Dugatkin proposes a series of experiments and mathematical models of imitation that examine: 1. the interaction between genetic and social/cultural factors (imitation) on female mate choice, 2. the development of female mate copying rules as animals grow older, 3. the effects of hunger-level on the tendency for females to copy each other's choice of mates, 4. the relationship between individual recognition and female mates copying, and 5. the effects of cultural evolution on the dynamics of female mate choice via a family of mathematical models. This work will provide some of the most detailed information yet available on cultural transmission in non-primates, and as such will help pave the way for future work designed to unravel the relationship between cultural and innate factors and the evolution of social behavior.
