TY - JOUR T1 - Non-random mating and information theory JF - bioRxiv DO - 10.1101/095901 SP - 095901 AU - A. Carvajal-Rodríguez Y1 - 2016/01/01 UR - http://biorxiv.org/content/early/2016/12/21/095901.abstract N2 - In this work, mate choice is modeled by means of the abstract concept of mating propensity. This only assumes that different type of couples can have different mating success. Thus, the model is adequate for any population where mating among distinct types is occurring. There is no extra assumption about particular mating scheme or preference model. It is shown that the concept of mating propensity permits to express the observed change in the mating frequencies as the gain in information with respect to random mating. This information framework provides the connection between mate choice and the exact mathematical partition of the choice effects. Namely sexual isolation, sexual selection and a mixed effect. The sexual selection component is the sum of the intrasexual male and female selection. Interestingly, the information partition is composed of log-likelihood ratios providing a baseline for defining adequate null hypotheses for the distinct aspects of the mate choice problem. The utility of the proposed framework is shown by analyzing real data to compare previous estimates of intra and intersexual effects. On the other hand, some toy-models are also studied showing how different mating schemes (e.g. by similarity or by preference-display) correspond to different proportions of intra- and intersexual selection information. We outline that when the effect of the phenotype onto the mating propensity is multiplicative the intersexual selection effects cannot appear. Thus, sexual isolation occurs as a deviation from multiplicativity in the phenotypic or trait effects over mate choice. The preference-display models are also easily interpreted in terms of information and we have inspected models of full isolation, full intrasexual selection and mixed effect models. It is concluded that the new framework permits testing the different choice effects. Additionally, it provides a new setting for exploring different mating models and their consequences. ER -