Mate choice and its implications for conservation and management

摘要

The potential contribution of behavioural principles to conservation is not widely appreciated despite a recent burst of interest in the interface between the two disciplines. Many aspects of behaviour, including social interactions, foraging, habitat selection, imprinting, and antipredator strategies, are relevant to the propagation and preservation of species. In this paper, I focus on what we know about how individuals choose mates, a subject in which tremendous advances have been made in the past two decades. I discuss how current understanding of patterns and causes of mate preferences can address conservation problems. By viewing the behaviour of individuals as being adapted to their circumstances, robust predictions can be made about the consequences of environmental change. For example, changes to natural habitats alter the mating decisions of individuals, and thus the genetics and demography of populations; this has clear conservation implications. Further, individuals are expected to make mate choice decisions that maximize their reproductive success, and this insight can be used while planning captive breeding strategies. In addition, knowledge of the development of mating preferences and of the mechanisms of mating decisions allows us to influence mating behaviour to meet conservation goals. Managers would benefit by considering the ways in which mate choice behaviour might help or hinder their conservation interventions.