The hypothesis of reproductive compensation and its assumptions about mate preferences and offspring viability.

The Compensation Hypothesis says that parents and prospective parents attempt to make up for lowered offspring viability by increasing reproductive effort to produce healthy, competitive offspring and by increasing investment in less viable, but still-living progeny (parental effects). The hypothesis assumes that offspring viability is lower when individuals are constrained (often through sexual conflict) to breed with individuals they do not prefer. We review results of experimental tests of the offspring-viability assumption in Tanzanian cockroaches, fruit flies, pipefish, wild mallards, and feral house mice.