Intersexual selection in animal behavior involves mate choice, which is usually done by the females since they invest more energy into each offspring. Some direct benefits of a choosy female include nuptial gifts, parental care, territory quality, and resource benefits. Nuptial gifts are things a male might bring a female to encourage her to mate with him. These are a lot of the time rey items, such as in the empid fly, spermatophores, such as in insects or salamanders, or body parts, like how female crickets are allowed to gnaw off the wing of a male they are mating with. Being choosy can benefit the female by providing her with better parental care. This is true in stickeback fish, where males with red bellies are preferrable since they indicate the mall will be better at fanning the eggs with oxygen after they are fertilized. Territory quality is another way the female wins by being choosy. Lots of female birds will assess a territory established by the male before choosing, ensuring her a safe place to mate and rear her young. Lastly, there are other resource benefits a hosen male may provide. In chimpanzees, males provide the females with food, and in dung beetles, males provide a dung ball for feed and a place to mate. These hypotheses are not mutually exclusive, meaning that in any given species, more than one can be true at any time.
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