Choosing a mate

One advantage of teaching this course many times is that I'm fairly familiar with the pace we need to go at. One thing I don't like to do is to rush through material at the end of a lecture just to finish off at a particular point. On Thursday I finished whist talking about non-random mating, having covered inbreeding but without covering other types of non-random mating. We will cover this on Monday. Basically ANY form of partner selection will make a mating system non-random. We know this goes on, in humans as well as other animals and plants, but it isn't always clear why particular mates are chosen.

In an interesting recent study that was in the press last week Lynda Boothroyd, in the Department of Psychology at the University of Durham in England, showed that women who enjoyed good childhood relationships with their fathers were more likely to select partners who resemble their dads. In contrast women who have negative or less positive relationships were not attracted to men who looked like their male parents.

In her own words:
' Does this mean that Freud was right? Well no - according to Freud normal people should resolve their 'complexes' in childhood and stop feeling attracted to their parents before puberty. This research shows that we learn what is good in a face partly from the faces of men to whom we have a strong positive relationship. Further research may show whether this is just fathers or, for example, whether elder siblings may play a role.'

This time last year: Extinction Vortex