Maintaining genetic diversity as a means to avoid premature convergence is critical in Genetic Programming. Several approaches have been proposed to achieve this, with some focusing on the mating phase from coupling dissimilar solutions to some form of self-adaptive selection mechanism. In nature, genetic diversity can be the consequence of many different factors, but when considering reproduction Sexual Selection can have an impact on promoting variety within a species. Specifically, Mate Choice often results in different selective pressures between sexes, which in turn may trigger evolutionary differences among them. Although some mechanisms of Sexual Selection have been applied to Genetic Programming in the past, the literature is scarce when it comes to mate choice. Recently, a way of modelling mating preferences by ideal mate representations was proposed, achieving good results when compared to a standard approach. These mating preferences evolve freely in a self-adaptive fashion, creating an evolutionary driving force of its own alongside fitness pressure. The inner mechanisms of this approach operate from personal choice, as each individual has its own representation of a perfect mate which affects the mate to be selected. In this paper, we compare this method against a random mate choice to assess whether there are advantages in evolving personal preferences. We conducted experiments using three symbolic regression problems and different mutation rates. The results show that self-adaptive mating preferences are able to create a more diverse set of solutions when compared to the traditional approach and a random mate approach (with statistically significant differences) and have a higher success rate in three of the six instances tested.

翻译：摘要：在遗传编程中，通过维持遗传多样性以避免过早收敛至关重要。已有多种方法旨在实现这一目标，其中一些方法聚焦于交配阶段，从耦合相异解到某种形式的自适应选择机制。在自然界中，遗传多样性可能源于众多不同因素，但就繁殖而言，性选择能促进物种内部多样性提升。具体而言，择偶常导致不同性别间产生不同的选择压力，进而可能触发两性之间的进化差异。尽管过去已有一些性选择机制被应用于遗传编程，但关于择偶的文献仍十分匮乏。近期，一种通过理想伴侣表征来建模交配偏好的方法被提出，与标准方法相比取得了良好效果。这些交配偏好以自适应方式自由进化，与适应度压力并行形成其自身的进化驱动力。该方法的内在机制基于个体选择，每个个体拥有对其完美伴侣的独特表征，这会影响被选中的伴侣。本文将此方法与随机择偶进行对比，以评估进化个体偏好是否具有优势。我们使用三个符号回归问题和不同突变率进行了实验。结果表明，与标准方法和随机择偶方法相比（存在统计显著性差异），自适应交配偏好能产生更多样化的解集，并在六个测试实例中的三个实例中具有更高的成功率。