Love before Sex

Much has been debated about the benefit of sexual over asexual reproduction in terms of evolutionary fitness. Here we focus on the advantage that may be brought about by the process of mating, where the choosing of mates contributes to the increase in fitness in a constructive way. We carry out computer simulations of such mating systems and investigate, on one hand, how mate phenotypes contribute to offspring fitness, and, on the other hand, how selection affects mate phenotypes. We discuss how helpful such a mechanism may be in determining trajectories on rugged energy landscapes leading to global optimum.