Nineteen Years of Consistently Positive and Strong Female Mate Preferences despite Individual Variation

Sexual selection driven by mate choice has generated some of the most astounding diversity in nature, suggesting that population-level preferences should be strong and consistent over many generations. On the other hand, mating preferences are among the least repeatable components of an individual animal’s phenotype, suggesting that consistency should be low across an animal’s lifetime. Despite decades of intensive study of sexual selection, there is almost no information about the strength and consistency of preferences across many years. In this study, we present the results of more than 5,000 mate choice tests with a species of wild frog conducted over 19 consecutive years. Results show that preferences are positive and strong and vary little across years. This consistency occurs despite the fact that there are substantial differences among females in their strength of preference. We also suggest that mate preferences in populations that are primarily the result of sensory exploitation might be more stable over time than preferences that are primarily involved in assessing male quality.