Abstract
Mate choice is an important biological phenomenon with a significant impact on the evolution of organisms. Here, we relied in previous results on the description of mate choice effects as a flow of information, for developing different classes of models distinguished by their evolutionary effects: sexual selection and/or isolation.
We obtained formulas for the maximum likelihood estimates of each model and compared three different information criteria (AICc, KICc, and BIC) for performing multimodel inference. Simulation results showed a good performance of both model selection and parameter estimation. We applied the modelling framework to real data, and estimated the mating preference parameters in the Galician Littorina saxatilis ecotypes, confirming the pattern of positive assortative mating in this species.
As far as we know, this is the first standardized methodology for model selection and multimodel inference of mate choice effects. The full methodology was implemented in a software called InfoMating (available at http://acraaj.webs.uvigo.es/InfoMating/Infomating.htm.
Footnotes
* A. Carvajal-Rodríguez. Departamento de Bioquímica, Genética e Inmunología. Universidad de Vigo, 36310 Vigo, Spain. Phone/Fax: +34 986130052/986813828 email: acraai{at}uviso.es