Meaning of assortative mating | Babel Free

Definitions

Between males and females of a species, the mutual attraction or selection, for reproductive purposes, of individuals with similar characteristics.

countable, uncountable

Equivalents

Examples

“Underlying all distributions of characters in assortative matings are certain elementary principles based on probabilities and the theory of sampling.”

“A recent New York Times Magazine story that investigated the rise of diagnoses of bipolar disorder in children suggested assortative mating as a possible cause, because parents who are both bipolar—and who may marry because they are more likely to understand one another's symptoms—are more likely to have bipolar children.”

CEFR level