Male facial attractiveness and masculinity may provide sex‐ and culture‐independent cues to semen quality

Phenotype‐linked fertility hypothesis (PLFH) predicts that male secondary sexual traits reveal honest information about male fertilization ability. However, PLFH has rarely been studied in humans. The aim of the present study was to test PLFH in humans and to investigate whether potential ability to...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of evolutionary biology 2014-09, Vol.27 (9), p.1930-1938
Main Authors: Soler, C, Kekäläinen, J, Núñez, M, Sancho, M, Álvarez, J. G, Núñez, J, Yaber, I, Gutiérrez, R
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Adult
attractiveness
Colombia
Cues
Cultural Characteristics
Evolution
Face
Female
females
Genotype & phenotype
human
human fertility
Humans
Infertility
Male
male fertility
Males
Masculinity
men
nationality
Phenotype
phenotype‐linked fertility hypothesis
Regression Analysis
Reproduction
semen
Semen Analysis
semen quality
sexual selection
Spain
Sperm
sperm competition
spermatozoa
testosterone
Young Adult
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Summary:Phenotype‐linked fertility hypothesis (PLFH) predicts that male secondary sexual traits reveal honest information about male fertilization ability. However, PLFH has rarely been studied in humans. The aim of the present study was to test PLFH in humans and to investigate whether potential ability to select fertile partners is independent of sex or cultural background. We found that on the contrary to the hypothesis, facial masculinity was negatively associated with semen quality. As increased levels of testosterone have been demonstrated to impair sperm production, this finding may indicate a trade‐off between investments in secondary sexual signalling (i.e. facial masculinity) and fertility or status‐dependent differences in investments in semen quality. In both sexes and nationalities (Spanish and Colombian), ranked male facial attractiveness predicted male semen quality. However, Spanish males and females estimated facial images generally more attractive (gave higher ranks) than Colombian raters, and in both nationalities, males gave higher ranks than females. This suggests that male facial cues may provide culture‐ and sex‐independent information about male fertility. However, our results also indicate that humans may be more sensitive to facial attractiveness cues within their own populations and also that males may generally overestimate the attractiveness of other men to females.
ISSN:1010-061X
1420-9101
DOI:10.1111/jeb.12446