A theory of mate choice based on heterozygosity

Increased heterozygosity for MHC class II lineages in newborn males

“…Brown reviewed the importance of heterozygosity at somatic allozyme loci in male fitness and mating success. 66,67 By offering genetically diverse rather than uniform sperms, heterozygote males would increase their chances in sperm selection (selective fertilization), in selective implantation and embryonic growth. If the pre-copulatory mate choice concerns the MHC and aims for heterozygosity as several studies suggested, 61,63,68 heterozygote males will have advantage over homozygotes.…”

Color in competition contexts in non-human animals

“…For example, colour may reflect dietary access to pigments (Hill, 2006), the bearer's ability to overcome a handicap (Zahavi, 1975), resist pathogens (Hamilton & Zuk, 1982), cope with the immunosuppressive effects of testosterone (Folstad & Karter, 1992) or the costs of oxidative stress (von Schantz, Bensch, Grahn, Hasselquist, & Wittzell, 1999); or the ability to withstand stressors (Buchanan, 2000;Hillgarth & Wingfield, 1997;Westneat & Birkhead, 1998). At a genetic level, colour may signal overall genetic diversity and fitness (Brown, 1997), or genetic quality related to particular coding loci, such as the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), a multigene family that plays a critical role in the immune response (Penn & Potts, 1998). In each case, low quality individuals would be unable to sustain the physiological costs associated with producing a colour signal.…”

Female mate choice across spatial scales: influence of lek and male attributes on mating success of blue-crowned manakins

“…Doucet & Montgomerie 2003), and evidence that preferred males produce offspring that is more viable (Petrie 1994;Welch et al 1998) suggests that such traits are in fact indicators of male quality. While the adaptive value of particular 'good' genes is likely to be strongly environment-dependent (Zhou et al 2008), high heterozygosity is generally beneficial to individuals and has been associated with increased fitness across a wide range of species, including in wild and nonisolated populations (Brown 1997;Coltman & Slate 2003). Females can effectively increase heterozygosity in offspring by choosing mates that are genetically dissimilar (Suter et al 2007) or highly heterozygous themselves (Hoffman et al 2007).…”