Sexually differential movements and optimization of mating encounters

Abstract

How should males and females move to get their mating partner? When searchers have no or little locational information of the targets, their movement patterns can determine the search efficiency. In this report, I introduced our recent studies analyzing the efficient movement patterns when both males and females mutually search for mating partners. The extensive simulations revealed the condition where a population with sexually dimorphic movement patterns can achieve the highest individual mating success. The advantage of the dimorphic movement varied across the length of searching time, and it achieved the highest encounter rates at the intermediate time span when encounters of other monomorphic movements were unsuccessful. Moreover, I also proceeded the mate search situation with sex-specific attracting signals and found that signal senders should move more slowly and/or less extensively than receivers to improve mating encounters. These all theoretical predictions were empirically demonstrated by observing mating biology of subterranean termites. Finally, I discussed the advantage of dimorphic movements in a random search which can be applied to various social interactions, including those of our own species.