The evolution of courtship rituals in monogamous species

In this paper we propose an alternative explanation for theevolution of courtship rituals in monogamous species. We demonstrate,using computer simulations, how male courtship might developas males exploit response biases in females to manipulate thefemale into starting reproduction before she has been ableto assess the male's intentions. In our coevolutionary simulations, a recurrent, artificial neural network is used to model thefemale recognition mechanism, while the displaying male isrepresented by a sequence of signals. Our particular modelsituation is just one example of how a reproductive conflictcould result in the evolution of ritualized displays in monogamous species. Since reproductive conflicts occur even after pairformations, the explanation we propose may also apply to ritualsthat occur after pair formation.