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Mate choice
Mate choice is important for female primates because it is beneficial to their reproductive success. Female mate choice in primates is defined as the ability of female primates to choose a high-quality male to copulate with and yields indirect and direct benefits.

Direct benefit for the female’s reproductive success is defined by a male’s ability to improve the chances of survival of their offspring, which often comes from paternal care. Ideally, a female would choose to copulate with a male that can help protect her offspring. Although paternal investment by males in the care of offspring is generally small and highly variable across primate species, some of the ways in which a male can care of and protect an offspring to increase its chances of survival include protection from aggression and infanticide by other males. On the other hand, indirect benefits are those that affect the genetic quality of the offspring; therefore, these predict that a female would choose a mate of high genetic quality. Although there are benefits in the ability for females to choose their mates, it is important to point out that they cannot always act on their preferences.

Evidence of female mate preference
One indirect benefit from choosing a mate is the genetic quality of a potential male partner that can manifest itself with physical features. Female primates have preference for certain physical traits and there are two hypotheses for the link between indirect benefits and physical traits. The first was developed by geneticist Ronald Fisher who hypothesized that when females choose a male with good genes or “attractive features” these will be passed down to the sons and later increase the reproductive success of the female’s offspring. One example is rhesus macaques females who prefer males with more red and symmetrical faces and by choosing a male with a red or symmetrical face would pass down these characteristics to their offspring as well. The second hypothesis is that the link between genetics and physical features is that they could be indicators of the physiological quality of the male. In some cases, ornamentations are physical indicators of good genes related to things like immunocompetence in males. Such genes related to immune response include MHC genes, which in lemurs are physically manifested in the scent that they release from their glands and is found on their tails. In this case, it makes sense that a female would prefer certain physical features if it meant that their offspring would inherit a high-quality immune system.

Evidence of female mate choice
The connection between female preference and actual choice can be affected by the social dynamics of the group among females and males. As shown in vervet monkeys, female primates have a preference to mate with alpha males; however, depending on the female’s own social rank, the male could reject solicitations for mating from the female. This means that even when there is a clear preference for males to mate with alpha males, they cannot always act on it. One issue this brings up is related to how to separate female mate choice from male-male competition, since it is often not clear which mechanism creates the results. Nonetheless, in Japanese macaques, male intrusion of a male and female engaging in sexual interactions in Japanese macaques does not affect female mate choice, which shows that in this case, even with male-male competition female mate choice is more important.