do males have to compete for females in all species of organism?

ssj4kevin · 2015-01-02T12:22:51+00:00

I don't know the answer to your question for sure, but I imagine that there are some species where the dynamic is different from ours.

Part of why males compete for females so much in our species has to do with the fact that female humans (and of course many other species) can only reproduce every 9 months. Men can go reproduce with many women all in one night if they want to. Essentially, a female's reproductive contribution is inherently more valuable because it is less available.

There are species for which females do not gestate a fetus inside themselves, and therefore are probably more likely to be reproductively available, meaning the dynamic of males seeking females (and females doing the choosing) is either going to be severely toned down or completely absent in those species.

As for your example with the spiders, you need to understand that it is likely in the best interest of the male spider to be eaten (from an evolutionary perspective), which is why it happens. In those kinds of species ensuring that the female has a sufficient nutrition to reproduce to completion is more important to the male than continuing to live. The trade-off being that although the male spider will be unable to reproduce again, a completed reproduction in those scenarios tends to result in hundreds or thousands of offspring.

Hope this helps even though it doesn't completely answer your question.

alpha_n3rd · 2015-01-02T18:05:28+00:00

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglerfish#Reproduction

Some anglerfish, like those of the ceratioid group (Ceratiidae, or sea devils), employ an unusual mating method. Because individuals are locally rare, encounters are also very rare. Therefore, finding a mate is problematic. When scientists first started capturing ceratioid anglerfish, they noticed that all of the specimens were female. These individuals were a few centimetres in size and almost all of them had what appeared to be parasites attached to them. It turned out that these "parasites" were highly reduced male ceratioids. This indicates the anglerfish use a polyandrous mating system.

Males pretty much swim around until they find a female or die. There's no intra-male competition.

[deleted] · 2015-01-02T09:14:58+00:00

Why's it matter? This question should be directed towards a biologist, not here.

Title	do males have to compete for females in all species of organism?
Author	bobbatosakosanose
Upvotes	3
Comments	5
Date	January 2, 2015 6:27 AM UTC (11 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/askTRP
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/asktrp/comments/2r2uiv/do_males_have_to_compete_for_females_in_all/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/askTRP/do-males-have-to-compete-for-females-in-all.144869 https://theredarchive.com/post/144869

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