Hydaelyn Role-Players

(08-15-2013, 06:22 AM)Myxie Tryxle Wrote: [ -> ]The way I've argued this in other threads on the subject is that monogamy may exist under the Keepers, but it wouldn't be the norm.  There's way too much incentive for males to be promiscuous.  If they paired up 1 to 1 and half the population had no mate, there would be a coup or rampant adultery or both.  I've also read that males are reclusive and tend to be nomadic, so polyamory just makes the most sense to me.  For my own backstory, I'm having Myxie's dad experience wanderlust, traveling around and never spending more than a couple months in any single place but tending to return to the same communities around the same time year after year.

As for only the top females breeding, this is also unlikely.  Even if it did exist in this fashion at some point, exposure to the other races (Hyur, etc.) would likely break down that barrier.  Wolves, for example, have alpha structures where only the top male and top female breed.  Dogs, the domesticated siblings of wolves, don't experience that same restriction, indicating it was removed during the domestication process.  Also given that there are more Keepers than Seekers, it's unlikely the Keepers have a more restrictive breeding system than the Seekers.

As for bees, I wouldn't use them as a point of comparison.  Hive insects like bees have a haplodiploid chromosome system for gender determination versus the diploid system we tend to think of as normal.  As far as I know, haplodiploid doesn't exist in any mammal species, only in some insects and rotifers.

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You may find a fair amount of what you're looking for in a thread I did a while ago on Miqo'te Mating Strategies.  There's a fair amount of good discussion there on many points surrounding this issue.

Studies in humans have shown there is a distinct advantage to having nonmating pairings to aid with child protection/rearing in an extended family setup. If this were more extensively mandated biologically as is the case with the Keepers likely a high level of homosexual behavior would be involved. Equally likely as they have excess females Keepers might be pushed to have more types who look outward from their race for relationships.

Looking for information about the Mosuo, I found this scientific thesis on the subject that has a lot of interesting information about the research into matrilineal societies.

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to find anything with statistics for gender ratio among the Mosuo, but there was an indication that Mosuo society appeared to reverse the trend for male preference seen in the Han majority. The Mosuo value and encourage female offspring, which may skew their gender ratio towards more females than males (which is contrary to the world average).

For further reading on the points that have been brought up on this thread, I suggest the wikipedia pages on Gender Ratio, Fisher's Principle, Kin Selection/Hamilton's rule and Cooperative Breeding.

I'd also caution that the writers for Square Enix probably aren't scientists and likely didn't put nearly this much thought into the mating system. Whatever lore we see in game about this will likely either skim the surface or contradict real world scientific theory to some degree.

What an interesting read (perfect with morning coffee). Thank you for linking this thesis!