The Evolution of Concealed Ovulation

Burley, Nancy

doi:10.1086/283532

Cited by 185 publications

(53 citation statements)

References 31 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…For close to half a century, evolution-minded theories of human sexuality have typically been built around a foundational 'fact': during the course of their evolution, women lost a distinct phase of fertile sexuality in their reproductive cycles, typically referred to as 'oestrus' in non-human mammalian species (see Etkin 1964;Jolly 1972;Alexander & Noonan 1979;Burley 1979;Spuhler 1979;Symons 1979;Alexander 1990). Behaviourally, oestrus has been thought to entail enhanced proceptivity and receptivity to males when females are fertile.…”

Section: Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human oestrus

2008

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

For several decades, scholars of human sexuality have almost uniformly assumed that women evolutionarily lost oestrus-a phase of female sexuality occurring near ovulation and distinct from other phases of the ovarian cycle in terms of female sexual motivations and attractivity. In fact, we argue, this long-standing assumption is wrong. We review evidence that women's fertile-phase sexuality differs in a variety of ways from their sexuality during infertile phases of their cycles. In particular, when fertile in their cycles, women are particularly sexually attracted to a variety of features that likely are (or, ancestrally, were) indicators of genetic quality. As women's fertile-phase sexuality shares with other vertebrate females' fertile-phase sexuality a variety of functional and physiological features, we propose that the term oestrus appropriately applies to this phase in women. We discuss the function of women's non-fertile or extended sexuality and, based on empirical findings, suggest ways that fertile-phase sexuality in women has been shaped to partly function in the context of extra-pair mating. Men are particularly attracted to some features of fertile-phase women, but probably based on by-products of physiological changes males have been selected to detect, not because women signal their cycle-based fertility status.

show abstract

Section: Overviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

Human oestrus

2008

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Some authors (e.g. Burley 1979) had proposed that females manage monogamy by concealing the time of ovulation from their mate. Since the male cannot know when the female ovulates, he is prevented from seeking other mates.…”

Section: Techniques To Study Social Odoursmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social odours, sexual arousal and pairbonding in primates

Snowdon

Ziegler

Schultz-Darken³

et al. 2006

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

We describe the role of social odours in sexual arousal and maintaining pairbonds in biparental and cooperatively breeding primates. Social odours are complex chemical mixtures produced by an organism that can simultaneously provide information about species, kinship, sex, individuality and reproductive state. They are long lasting and have advantages over other modalities. Both sexes are sensitive to changes in odours over the reproductive cycle and experimental disruption of signals can lead to altered sexual behaviour within a pair. We demonstrate, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), that social odours indicating reproductive state directly influence the brain areas responsible for sexual behaviour. Social odours also influence other brain areas typically involved in motivation, memory and decision making, suggesting that these signals have more complex functions in primates than mere sexual arousal. We demonstrate a rapid link between social odours and neuroendocrine responses that are modulated by a male's social status. Recent work on humans shows similar responses to social odours. We conclude with an integration of the importance of social odours on sexual arousal and maintaining pairbonds in socially biparental and cooperatively breeding species, suggesting new research directions to integrate social behaviour, neural activation and neuroendocrine responses.

show abstract

“…As for birds, EPP in humans creates sexual conflict that is resolved to some extent by behaviors (mate guarding, kin recognition), physiologies (concealed ovulation), and the advantages of sexual fidelity, particularly with respect to parental care (Benshoof and Thornhill 1979;Burley 1979;Alvergne et al 2009). We have focused this review on sexual conflict in birds, but we suggest that the perspectives we have taken here-on the players, changes in conflict across episodes of the breeding cycle, and the traits that evolve to reduce conflictare generally applicable to the study of sexual conflict in any organism in which females mate multiply.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Sexual Conflict Arising from Extrapair Matings in Birds

Chaine

Montgomerie

Lyon

2015

Cold Spring Harb Perspect Biol

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The discovery that extrapair copulation (EPC) and extrapair paternity (EPP) are common in birds led to a paradigm shift in our understanding of the evolution of mating systems. The prevalence of extrapair matings in pair-bonded species sets the stage for sexual conflict, and a recent focus has been to consider how this conflict can shape variation in extrapair mating rates. Here, we invert the causal arrow and consider the consequences of extrapair matings for sexual conflict. Extrapair matings shift sexual conflict from a simple two-player (male vs. female) game to a game with three or more players, the nature of which we illustrate with simple diagrams that highlight the net costs and benefits of extrapair matings to each player. This approach helps identify the sorts of traits that might be under selection because of sexual conflict. Whether EPP is driven primarily by the extrapair male or the within-pair female profoundly influences which players are in conflict, but the overall pattern of conflict varies little among different mating systems. Different aspects of conflict are manifest at different stages of the breeding cycle and can be profitably considered as distinct episodes of selection caused by conflict. This perspective is illuminating both because conflict between specific players can change across episodes and because the traits that evolve to mediate conflict likely differ between episodes. Although EPP clearly leads to sexual conflict, we suggest that the link between sexual conflict and multiple paternity might be usefully understood by examining how deviations from lifetime sexual monogamy influence sexual conflict.T he development of genetic tools for determining parentage fundamentally altered our understanding of animal mating systems (Jeffreys et al. 1985;Avise 1996;Reynolds 1996) and provided invaluable insights into the consequences and causes of females mating with more than one male. Particularly for the study of birds, these methods revealed that social pair bonds often fail to match the actual patterns of copulations that produced offspring (Gowaty and Karlin 1984;Birkhead and Møller 1992;Reynolds 1996;Petrie and Kempenaers 1998), revolutionizing the study of avian mating systems. Extensive research and two recent reviews point out the progress we have made in this field and show how little we still understand extrapair behavior (Griffith et al. 2002;Westneat and Stewart 2003).

show abstract

The Evolution of Concealed Ovulation

Cited by 185 publications

References 31 publications

Human oestrus

Human oestrus

Social odours, sexual arousal and pairbonding in primates

Sexual Conflict Arising from Extrapair Matings in Birds

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About