The Neural Circuitry of Mating Behaviors

Choosing a suitable mating partner is one of the primary drivers of evolutionary processes. Animals, across the whole animal kingdom, have evolved species-specific communication strategies that influence mate choice ranging from visual, acoustic, tactile, olfactory centric and smartphone app based strategies. Through different sensory cues, animals interact and decipher information about gender, age, endocrine, social and sexual status to choose the mate that more likely ensure reproductive success and obtain offspring with greater fitness. Importantly, in many animals, mate choice is frequently guided by multimodal signals, suggesting animals gather information through integration of sensory modalities. Despite a huge interest in understanding the brain mechanisms underlying reproductive behaviors, the sensory systems and underlying circuits involved in the selection of a suitable mate are less well characterized. The neural circuits by which sexual cues are encoded, integrated, and used to select the most suitable mating partner are still largely unknown. Moreover, diversity of strategies employed by different species for mate selection suggests that there may be both conserved neural mechanisms as well as species specific adaptations to the process. This Research topic fosters original submissions and systematic reviews on neural circuits involved in mate choice with particular focus on how sexual cues are encoded and used for mate choice and how multimodal sensori-communicative circuitry helps animals to find their best mate.

The goal of this Research topic is to bring together original research, reviews and perspectives on neuronal circuits involved in mate choice. Our aim is to provide a state-of-the-field picture of brain mechanisms and strategic decision rules that encode sexual cues to drive mate choice. We aim to attract contributions from multiple animal species and/or comparative analysis of such mechanisms in order to contribute an overview of the diversity of circuitry underlying mate selection.

We welcome studies that focus on understanding how brain areas process sensory stimuli involved in mate choice across different animal species and the role of multisensory integration in driving this choice. in this special issue we encourage submissions from original research studies and systemic reviews investigating brain circuits recruited during multisensory processing of sexual cues driving mate choice. Moreover, we are particularly interested in comparative studies looking at similarities and differences of recruited neuronal circuits across distinct animal species.