Key Terms in Evolutionary Biology of Sex, Gender, and Sexuality: Courtship

= Courtship  =

Definition
In a traditional context, courtship is defined as "the wooing of one person by another," or "the period during which such wooing takes place."1As it is applied in the context of the animal kingdom, courtship is "behavior in animals that occurs before and during mating, often including elaborate displays."2For the purposes of this class, we will be looking at the animal kingdom's courtship display system as well as theories of human courtship. Although human courtship can be of special interest to us, it is important to remember that human social constructions, customs, and constraints all play into human courtship and make it hard to separate science from sociology. Some scientists like to look at human courtship based on analogy with animal courtship, but others would argue that not all human courtship behaviors can be attributed to science or likened to an analogous animal courtship practice. [See "Debates" section for more on human vs. animal courtship.]

Example(s) of use in context
Generally speaking, there are many different forms of courtship that may take place in order for one mate to woo the other. These can include dances, touching, vocalizations, visual displays, or power competitions. One very commonly studied and cited example is the male bowerbird. These birds build "bowers" in order to impress and attract female mates. One type of bower is called a maypole bower, and it is constructed by placing sticks around a sapling, sometimes with the addition of a roof. The other major type of bower is an avenue type made of two parallel walls of vertically positioned sticks. With both types of bower, the male collects a wide variety of brightly colored objects (including "shells, leaves, flowers, feathers, stones, berries, and even discarded plastic items, coins, nails, rifle shells, or pieces of glass") and places them in or around the structure he has built. Studies of several different species of bowerbirds have proven that the colors of the decorations males use are consistent with the preferences of the females.3

undefinedAnother interesting and elaborate example of courtship in the animal kingdom is that of birds-of-paradise. Most species in this family have elaborate mating rituals; the Paradisaea species employs a lek-type mating system in which males gather and compete for female attention and favor. Other species within the family, like the Cicinnurus and Parotia species, have very elaborately planned and ritualized mating dances to attract females. This shows an interesting degree of complexity in mating rituals; even within one family, different species have different courtship styles ranging from male-male competition to display-type courtship rituals. Within sexually dimorphic species of birds-of-paradise, the male birds are polygamous; in at least some monomorphic species of birds-of-paradise, however, the males are monogamous.4

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Scientific background &amp; History
From the scientific viewpoint, courtship in the animal kingdom is used as a process for species to evaluate and select partners for reproduction and mating. In most species, courtship is the job of the male, as the female is seen as being the choosy one, and therefore needing to be impressed and won over. In polyandrous species, though, where the females are competing with each other for male mates, they will be the ones performing for the attention of the males. One of the most often cited theories if courtship and mate selection is the sociobiological model of The Selfish Gene, first originated by Richard Dawkins. This theory o sexual selection posits that mate selection is based on finding opposite-sex individuals within one's species who exhibit "good genes." In this model, courtship can be explained as a show of the "genes" carried by an individual looking to mate and pass on their good genes to the next generation of the species.

Debates
One debate or criticism within the study of animal courtship is that referring to the mating habits of non-human animal species and mate-selection processes as "courtship" is anthropomorphic and often misleading.5undefinedWhile there have been many different forms of "courtship" observed and recorded in the non-human animal kingdom, it is important to remember that we cannot project human values and social constructions onto these animals.

Another debate is whether a selfish theory of sexual selection is truly accurate, or whether, as Joan Roughgarden argues, the reality is in fact closer to what she calls a social selection theory, detailed in her book The Genial Gene: Deconstructing Darwinian Selfishness.6In the theory of social selection, Roughgarden shifts the focus from sexual struggle to parenting struggle, and from the ability to mate to the ability to raise offspring. She also argues that unlike in a sexual selection framework where selective pressure comes from aesthetic mate choice and/or same-sex combat within a species, social selection provides selective pressure through negotiations and inclusions and exclusions from cliques and social circles.

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Author
Danica Hecht

Image/Figure


[Male Greater Bird-of-paradise displaying his plumage.7]



[Bower of a male Satin Bowerbird.8]