Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Apartado Postal 0843-03092, Panamá, República de Panamá.
Integr Comp Biol. 2011 Sep;51(3):485-91. doi: 10.1093/icb/icr025. Epub 2011 May 30.
Matching was developed in the 1960s to match such entities as residents and hospitals, colleges and students, or employers and employees. This approach is based on "preference lists," whereby each participant ranks potential partners according to his/her preferences and tries to match with the highest-ranking partner available. Here, we discuss the implications of matching for the study of mate choice and speciation. Matching differs from classic approaches in several respects, most notably because under this theoretical framework, the formation of mating pairs is context-dependant (i.e., it depends on the configuration of pairings in the entire population), because the stability of mating pairs is considered explicitly, and because mate choice is mutual. The use of matching to study mate choice and speciation is not merely a theoretical curiosity; its application can generate counter-intuitive predictions and lead to conclusions that differ fundamentally from classic theories about sexual selection and speciation. For example, it predicts that when mate choice is mutual and the stability of mating pairs is critical for successful reproduction, sympatric speciation is a robust evolutionary outcome. Yet the application of matching to the study of mate choice and speciation has been largely dominated by theoretical studies. We present the hamlets, a group of brightly colored Caribbean coral reef fishes in the genus Hypoplectrus (Serranidae), as a particularly apt system to test empirically specific predictions generated by the application of matching to mate choice and speciation.
匹配是在 20 世纪 60 年代发展起来的，用于匹配居民和医院、学院和学生、雇主和员工等实体。这种方法基于“偏好列表”，即每个参与者根据自己的偏好对潜在伙伴进行排名，并试图与可用的排名最高的伙伴匹配。在这里，我们讨论了匹配对配偶选择和物种形成研究的影响。匹配在几个方面与经典方法不同，最显著的是因为在这个理论框架下，交配对的形成是依赖于环境的（即，它取决于整个种群中配对的配置），因为交配对的稳定性被明确考虑在内，并且因为配偶选择是相互的。使用匹配来研究配偶选择和物种形成不仅仅是一种理论上的好奇心；它的应用可以产生违反直觉的预测，并导致与关于性选择和物种形成的经典理论根本不同的结论。例如，它预测当配偶选择是相互的，并且交配对的稳定性对成功繁殖至关重要时，同域物种形成是一种强大的进化结果。然而，匹配在配偶选择和物种形成研究中的应用主要受到理论研究的主导。我们提出了 hamlets，这是加勒比海珊瑚礁中 Hypoplectrus 属（Serranidae）的一组色彩鲜艳的鱼类，作为一个特别适合的系统来检验特定的预测，这些预测是通过将匹配应用于配偶选择和物种形成得出的。
