摘要
Choosing a mate is likely one of the most influential decisions any individual makes because it heavily influences their fitness. Going back all the way to the seminal work by Darwin (1871, 1859), we mostly think of females as choosing mates, whereas males compete over mating opportunities with females. This view is very well supported, but somewhat incomplete. As Darwin struggled to find a good explanation for the existence of ornamental traits in males, he proposed Sexual Selection and along with that theory he suggested 2 mechanisms that could lead to and maintain such extreme traits: Female Choice and Male Competition. Historically, male competition was quickly accepted, whereas acceptance of female choice was delayed until much later, coinciding with the rise of modern feminism (Zuk 1993).