Do you know have an idea why courtship is often protracted? Well, scientists have come up with a mathematical model of the mating game to help explain why. The study reveals that the prolonged courtship enables the female to gauge the man’s ability to sustain her and also the male to screen the female is she is fit for a mate.
The researchers engaged game theory to analyse how males and females behave towards each other in the mating game. The mathematical model considers a male and a female in a courtship encounter of unspecified duration, with the game ending when one or other party quits or the female accepts the male as a mate. The assumption is that the male is either good or bad type from the females point of view. If good, the female gets a positive payoff from mating and vice versa. Also, the male gets a positive payoff from mating with any female, though his payoff is higher if he is “good” than if he is “bad”.
The study shows that extended courtship can take place, with a good male being willing to court for longer than a bad male and the female delaying mating. In this way the duration of a male’s courtship effort carries information about his type. By delaying mating, the female is able to make some use of this information to achieve a degree of screening.—if the male has not quit it becomes increasingly probable that he is a “good” male.
Although under this compromise there remains some risk that the female will mate with the wrong type of male, she cannot completely eliminate this risk unless she decides never to mate.
Reference: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/01/090116073603.htm
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