Mike Ryan:
(Friday, June 29, 11am)
Choosing a mate is one of the most important decisions an animal can make. The fitness costs and benefits have been analyzed extensively in the context of sexual selection. The neural and hormonal bases of mate choice have provided insights into how animals make such decisions. Less attention has been given to the higher-level cognitive processes involved. The assumption that animals choose mates predictably and rationally is often violated. I will review studies in which cognitive analyses suggest that mate choice decisions are more complex than they might seem.
Taylor, R.C.; Ryan, M.J. 2013. Interactions of multisensory components perceptually rescue túngara frog mating signals. Science 341:273-274.
Lea, A.L.; Ryan, M.J. 2015. Irrational mate choice revealed by túngara frogs. Science 349:964-966.
Ryan, M. J. 2018. Chapter 7, Fickle Preferences. from A Taste for the Beautiful: The Evolution of Attraction. Princeton University Press, Princeton. (link to come)
My question is more a question of methodology and the possibility to do so. If I understood well, your results were a lot “behavioural” results. The female was doing comparisons, for example, and then made a choice between the calls that she found more attractive. I was wondering if it would have been useful, or even possible, to insert some “neuro” markers in the methodology to see what regions exactly in the brain was more “activated” then others. And if some regions were inhibited with a less attractive call, for example. I got that question in mind because I thought of the conferences of June 27th “The cognitive ecology of monogamy” of M.Ophir, where he was working with gene expression level (hormones/receptors, etc), or the conferences of Mrs Woolley yesterday where she explains the preferences of female songbird in function of dopamine and norepinephrine, among others. Therefore, I was wondering if there were anything that was done more at the level of neural mechanisms for the frogs to support all your interesting results?
ReplyDeleteYou talked us about the violation of the principle of regularity in choices evaluation. Did you notice interindividual differences in the degree of which this principle is violated? If that so, how could you explain this variability?
ReplyDeleteThis is more of a comment than a question, but I was struck by the difference in how I considered the scientific explanation of the sexual preferences in frogs and the sexual preferences in humans with the face test. For some reason I found the scientific explanation of human sexual preference a little bit unsettling, but did not think twice about the same explanation being given of frogs. Perhaps another, more disturbing way of getting people to empathize with animals other than attributing human emotions to them would be to get people to see parallels between sterile behavioural accounts of animals and the same type of accounts of humans. This is why I thought that doing more of the frog experiments on humans, such as the competitive decoy test, would be interesting.
ReplyDeleteLes femelles crapaud semblent avoir des choix très différents et irrationnels dans la sélection de leur mâle. Ces espèces basent aussi leur critère de sélection sur plus d’un aspect, comme par exemple le gonflement de la gorge et la quantité/qualité du chant. Les choix irrationnels des femelles suggèrent qu’elles ont peut-être des personnalités/préférences différentes et cela peut être un indicateur de leur «free will». Mr. Ryan a bien mentionné que les expériences précoces n’étaient pas très importantes dans leur cas. Leur comportement/personnalité dans la sélection du mâle aurait donc une forte base biologique? L’hypothèse du biais perceptuelle est aussi très plausible.
ReplyDeleteWhy would personality differences indicate "free will" rather than just differences in constitution or in experience?
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ReplyDeleteIs economic theory a good comparative model for those behavior since we know that even humans don’t follow those theories and don’t really maximize their potentiel ? Just like matters of taste are never treated has being rational or not, in that case isn’t it more appropriate to deem the decision making process efficient or not ? – like a face-recognition system can’t be rational or not, it can be efficient or not ?
Mike Ryan nous a parlé, dans sa conférence, de ce qu’il nomme le “marché sexuel” (pour les femelles). Il a été question de savoir comment les choix sont faits et du “Principe de régularité” dont il est question dans certaines études d’économie. En effet, on a remarqué que les consommateurs avaient tendance à violer le principe en question en ne gardant pas leur “préférence” quand les choix sont changés. Ainsi, on a remarqué que les grenouilles femelles ne respectaient pas ce principe dans leur choix de partenaire. Leur évaluation d’un “appel” mâle change lorsqu’il y en a un troisième. C’est dire que quand elles font ces comparaisons, elles peuvent être influencées par un “appel” nouveau et choisir ce qu’elles n’auraient pas choisi s’il y en avait eu seulement deux. Conséquemment, la perception de la beauté est influencée non seulement par ce que l’on perçoit, mais également par d’autres facteurs. C’est plus compliqué que ce à quoi nous pourrions nous attendre à première vue. Ça devient plus difficile de dire ce qui est une préférence “stricte” et de prédire ce que sera la préférence de partenaire.
ReplyDeleteQ: "How's your spouse?"
DeleteA: "Compared to what?"
Does the «irrationality» of her choice implies some kind of emotionnally driven behaviour from the frog? Mr Ryan doesn’t see that at this moment, but rather just an influence of hormones in the behavior(ex. effect of the dopamine reward system in the females when she hears attractive calls. But the goal yet hasn’t been to document it in frogs. We also see that the choice is influenced by the number of male candidates.Presence of emotions or not, I can't help making a comparison with human beings! ;)
ReplyDeletehttps://www.staff.ncl.ac.uk/melissa.bateson /Bateson_Healy_2005.pdf
The fact that the female frogs have so many criteria for choosing their male shows us they are complex animal being. Further more, the fact that males would be recluent to use chucks if not in competition with another male, because it would attract bats, shows us they are conscient of others.
ReplyDeleteJust one comment: irrationality and emotion (like "love") are no longer equated concepts in studies of emotion. Some "rationality" can be found in emotions. "The Rationality of Emotions", Ronald de Sousa, 1990.
ReplyDeleteCould you refine what you mean by rational? To me, it has to do with our reasoning abilities. Logic, etc. It sounds absolutely possible to experience en emotion (say fear that Dad may die as he's having a heart attack) and yet treat the aversive stimulus/situation rationally (like, not panicking, dialing 911, saving Dad's life, etc.)
DeleteAlso, I doubt it's useful to label love itself as an emotion, although in common language most people do it. As far as I could tell from recent literature, it's more commonly labeled as a drive, closely related to our reward system, dopamine, etc. It's most certainly a felt state and it can indeed trigger a panoply of often extreme emotional states, but it doesn't have the characteristics of what we usually label as a specific emotion (like fear is fear, joy is joy... but love... love is just a bunch of hardly predictable stuff happening in the head, it's anything but specific). And I agree that it's possible to be in love and rational (if it's going well, try marriage; if there is abuse, call police, etc.), just like it's possible to have a cocaine addiction and admit it, take the appropriate measures to quit, go get help, etc. All perfectly rational steps. Yet there is this incompatibility, isn't there? Cause we do see a lot of denial while people are desperate for dopamine... :( Emotions, drives, irrationality... it's so difficult to decide on how to label feelings efficiently.
In humans, the high presence of masculinity traits that women seem to prefer is not correlated with the actual quality of the sperm or fitness quality of the men. Is the wine and chuck of a male an accurate indicator of genetic fitness for the male?
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